LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf _A-^-5©^, 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IT 



/ 




( POLLARD 5c MOSS, PUBLISHERS. N -Y.) 



ST. ANGELA MERICI, 



AkD '^' 



THE URSULINES. 



BY 



REV. BERNARD O'REILLY, L.D. (Laval), 

Author of " Heroic Women of the Bible, and the Chinch ;" " The Mirror of Trub 
Womanhood ; " " True Men as we Need Them ; " ''A Life of Pius IX.," Etc. 



'' . . . Never may thy sainted name 
Be thought or written save with soul aflarfta, 
Nor spoken openly, nor breathed apart 
Without a stir and swelling of the heart ; — 
O mate of Poverty ! O Pearl unpriced ! '* 

W. H. Myers 



OF COi-'^-^v 



New York; *^-^ 
POLLARD & MOSS, PUBLISHERS, 

47 JOHN STREET. 
1880. 



7^ 



Tb«I<ihu»t 
OP OoiinBim 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by the 

URSULINE SISTERS, 
{Ursuline Convent^ East Morrisania^ New York^ 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



TO 

THE URSDLINE COMMUNITY OF MOMISANIA, NEW YORK CITY, 

WHOSE GENEROUS LOVE FOR THEIR GLORIOUS PARENT, 

^Kxni %nQdu ^^ria, 

HAS LED TO THE WRITING OP THIS BOOK, 

IT IS NOW OFFERED IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OP THEIR SELF-SACRIFICING 

PIETY AND ZEAL, WITH THE FERVENT PRAYER THAT THEY 

MAY EVER BE, IN SPIRIT AND PRACTICE, 

THE TRUE DAUGHTEES OF SO ANGELIC A MOTHER; 

THAT EVERY ONE OF THE YOUNG SOULS TRAINED BY THEM MAY PROVE 
THE LIGHT AND JOY OP HER HOME IN THE WORLD ; AND THAT 
THEIR INSTITUTION, EVER GROWING IN FERVOR AND EX- 
CELLENCE, MAY, LIKE THE SACRED TREE OF INDIA, 
COVER THE LAND FAR AND WIDE WITH 
ITS OFFSHOOTS. 

THE AUTHOB, 



Imprimatur, 






New York, 

April 24, 1880. 



THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



The book here offered to the public was undertaken at a 
time when the author was busy on other most important and 
more attractive matter. Several heads of religious orders of 
women had written to him expressing the wish that he would 
undertake to prepare lives of their respective founders. Two 
of them were especially urgent in their request. 

Thereupon it was thought that a series of biographies, 
entitled ^^ Modern Apostles of Female Education/' might be 
of no little interest and advantage to our numerous teaching 
Orders and their pupils, as well as to the general public. At 
any rate, out of this conception grew St. A^^gela Merici 
AND THE Ursuli:n"es. Who knows but, all imperfect as it is, 
it may inspire other writers, both more zealous and more com- 
petent, to continue the series, and show how so many noble 
rivals and auxiliaries in this glorious apostleship of female 
education sprung up around the daughters of St. Angela ? 

In the following narrative the author has taken for his 
principal guide the Jesuit Salvatori, who, writing in Italy, 
and having ready at his hand both the local traditions and 
the most approved histories of St. Angela and her Order, has 
left us a Life incomparably better than any of those which 
preceded it. 

Even Salvatori's book, however, does not explain at all, or 
explains but unsatisfactorily, the long delays which occurred 
between the vision in which Angela was commanded to found 
in Brescia a society of religious women, and the foundation 
itself, a few years only before her death. This long interval, 



Till PREFACE. 

in the existing popular biographies of the Saint, is filled up — 
if indeed it can be said to be filled at all — with but few inter- 
esting incidents. How far the present Life has succeeded, 
both in explaining these delays and varying the monotony of 
these intervening years, is left to the reader to judge. 

The first half of the manuscript was in the hands of the 
publisher and printer, when a kind Quebec friend sent the 
author the first volume of Abbe Posters Histoire de Sai7ite 
AngUe Merici et de VOrdre des Urstilines, Though this 
able and interesting book came too late to help the author 
amid the confused and conflicting dates and statements of St. 
Angela's historians, it was no small satisfaction to see that 
Abbe Postel had taken pains, and not without success, to ex- 
plain the obstacles met with and overcome at length in found- 
ing the Company of St. Ursula. 

If, in some respects, the arrangement followed in the pres- 
ent Life of St. Angela differs from the Italian or French 
biographies, it need only be said that the author has con- 
sulted principally the best interests of American readers. 
To them, he firmly trusts, the sketch here submitted of the 
life and labors of the Holy Maid of Desenzano will prove 
attractive, edifying, and instructive. 

New York, April 2, 1880. 

Note. — The reader unacquainted witli the language and customs of 
Italy, may be surprised that the names of some of the Lady-Directresses 
should be written one way on page 231, and quite a different way on pages 
182 and 183. All are scrupulously written, in both places, as they are 
given by Father Salvatori, who, in the orthography of pages 182 and 183 
follows the general rules of classical Italian, and in giving the " Testa- 
tament" of St. Angela, conforms to the local idiom of Brescia, used by 
the Saint. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Archiepiscopal Approbation iii 

Dedication v 

Author's Preface vii 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY : SUPERNATURAL ATMOSPHERE OF ITALIAN HOME- 
LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 

Supernatural Sanctity, how Prevalent among all Classes of Italian 

Society 1-3 

Italian Saints contemporary with the Parents of Angela Merici 8 

Living Saints of Upper Italy about 1474 4 

B. Caterina da Palanza 4 

B. Maddalena Panatieri 4 

St. Cajetan of Tiene and his Mother 4 

St. Jerome Emiliani ' 5 

B. Margaret of Ravenna 6 

Influence of Women in Cultivating this Abundant Growth of 

Sanctity 7 

Saints Living in 1540, at the Date of Angela Merici's death 7, 8 

In Rome, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri ; elsewhere, 
Charles Borromeo, Michael Ghisleri (St. Pius V.), Francis Borgia, 
St. Camillo de Lellis, St. Felix Cantalici, St. Andrew Avellino, 

BB. Paul of Arezzo, Alexander Sauli, and Benedict Filadelf 8, 9 

Uncanonized Saints ; how numerous 9, 10 

Saintly Personages not the Rare and Gigantic Flowers of Equatorial 
Regions ; but the Sweet and Modest Flowers which Thrive in 

every Land 10, 11 

Angela Merici and her Sister's early Virtues as Compared with some 

Holy Contemporaries , 13 

St. Veronica of Milan and her Parents ; a Poor Peasant Family. . 12-14 
Their Ideal of Christian Holiness as Familiar to the People of Upper 

Italy, as the Way of Cultivating the Vine 15 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

The noble Catharine Fieschi-Adorno of Genoa ; her Married Life ; 

her Life in the Cloister ; her beautiful Writings 15-19 

The Transforming Love of Christ Crucified in St. Ignatius, St. 

Francis Xavier, St. Francis of Assisi 20-22 

The last named Saint and the Stigmata ; the Fire and Light which 

Enwrapped Monte Alvernia 23 

This Sacred Fire Burning Brightly at the Birth of Angela Merici. .25-27 

CHAPTER IL 

BIKTH AND PARENTAGE OF ANGELA MERICI. 

The Lake of Garda and the town of Desenzano 28, 29 

The Merici and Biancosi 30 

Spiritual Influences Surrounding the Home of the Merici 31, 32 

The Observantines of St. Francis 33 

The Merici, Ardent Admirers of Heroic Sanctity 33 

Uncommon Pains taken by Angela's Parents to Cultivate the Love of 

Heroic Piety in their Children ^ 33 

Nightly Reading in common of the Lives of the Saints 33 

Angela's Early Admiration of these Heroic Men and Women 34 

Her Early EflPorts at Imitation of Them 34 

Her Beauty in Childhood ; her Generosity ,Wisdom, and Self-control. 34 

How she Resented being Complimented on her Beautiful Hair 35 

Her Parents Encourage while Controlling the Ascetic Fervor of An- 
gela and her Sister 36, 37 

A Happy and Blessed Home 37, 38 

CHAPTER in. 

ANGELA'S FIRST BITTER TRIALS. 

Why her First Communion was Delayed ; Concourse of Circum- 
stances which were Unfavorable to Frequent Communion and 

Confession in the Italy of those Days 39, 40 

Divine Economy of the Eucharistic Sacrament and Sacrifice 41 

Angela's Merici' s Intense Happiness at the Table of the Lamb 42 

Growth of Angela in Spiritual Loveliness ; the Bright and Pure At- 
mosphere of her Home ; Precautions taken to Shield the Soul of 
Girlhood from the Knowledge of Evil 43 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGE 

Angela's Early Vow of Virginity not the Result of Temptation ; 

but Inspired by tlie Love of Perfection 44, 45 

She Loses her Father in her Fifteenth Year 46 

She Devotes herself to her Widowed Mother 47 

Her Sister becomes her Guide in Spirituality 47 

Their Pious Remembrance of their Father's Soul 48 

Her Sister Dies Suddenly within the Year after her Father's Death. . 50 
How both Girls had Grown in Supernatural Perfection during these 

years : the Mystery of Life in the natural and supernatural 

Worlds , 52, 53 

Vision in which Angela beholds her Deceased Sister among the 

Blessed ; She is Bidden to Persevere in the Better Way 54 

Effect of such Miraculous Visions on Chosen Souls like Angela's. ... 55 

CHAPTER IV. 

UTTER DESOLATION. 

The Vision sent to Angela probably helped to Prepare her Mother 

for Death 57 

Signora Merici Sickens and Dies in less than a Year after her 

daughter 58 

Secret Purpose of Providence in these trials 59 

The Girl of Seventeen and her Brother taken to Said by their Uncle 

Biancosi 60 

Magnificent Situation of Said ; Enchanting Scenery of the Lake 

Shore Northward of Said 61, 62 

Interior Trials which assail Angela at this Period ; she and her 

Brother Resolve to lead the Life of Hermits in the mountains. . 63-66 

They Leave Said Secretly ; but are Brought Back 67 

Angela even then Popularly Designated as ''a Little Saint from 

Paradise ; " the two Orphans held up by Parents as models for 

all Children 69 

Angela Loses her Brother in her Twenty-second Year . .. ,,,.,,..,,. 69 

CHAPTER V. 

BACK IN THE OLD HOME, 

She is Welcomed by her Townspeople and finds a Companion, who 
takes her Sister's place , 72 



xu CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The Process by wMcli God perfects Chosen Souls in detacliment 

from all things 73 

She Loses her Adopted Sister 73 

Young Persons of her own Age drawn to Angela 73 

The Vision at Brudazzo, in which Angela beholds a Company of 
Saintly Virgins ; and is Commanded to Found one like it in 

Brescia 75, 76 

Increase of Fervor caused by this Second Vision 77 

To become a frequent Communicant she joins the Tertiary Order of 

St. Francis 77 

Angela Merici may be justly called the Seraph of Christian Schools. 77 

Why St. Francis of Assisi is called the '* Seraphic.'* 77 

Protestant Testimony to the Genuineness of his Seraphic Spirit. ... 78 

A Pregnant Lesson for all the Christian Men of To-day 78 

CHAPTER VL 

THE PATERNAL HOME IN DESENZANO CONTINUES TO BE ANGELA'S 

SCHOOL. 

How Angela Spent Seventeen Years in the Home of her Childhood . 79 

Grateful Testimony borne by her Fellow-Citizens 79 

Her House a School for Young and Old 80 

Imperious Circumstances which rendered Impracticable the Found- 
ing of a New Order in Brescia 81 

Her Saintly Influence over her Young Countrywomen 82 

Why Angela could not in Desenzano open a School for Children like 

Our Schools of To-day 83 

Printing was then only in its Infancy 82 

V^hat High and Low learned in Angela's School 83 

The Noble Family of the PatengoU from Brescia cultivate Angela's 

acquaintance 83 

They desire to have her Reside in Brescia, 84 

Situation of Brescia ; Its History ...........,.,,, 85 

Occupied by the French in 1512 85 

Horrible Butchery of 22,000 Brescians by the French, under Gaston 

de Foix , ... 86 

The ruined City restored to Venice in 1516 86 

Jerome Patengoli Loses suddenly his two Children ,.....,,. 86 



CONTENTS, xiu 

PAGK 

Angela Merici sent to Brescia by her Superiors 87 

Her Deliglit in Visiting the Venerable Churches of the City 88 

Her active Charity 88 

The Ruinous Condition of Brescia forbids her thinking of Founding 

her Society 89 

She is offered a Home by Antonio dei Romani 89 

She visits the Tomb of B. Osanna Andreasi in Milan 90 

Is Welcomed at Solferino by the Gonzagas 90 

State of Upper Italy in 1522 92 

Angela feels Impelled to Visit Jerusalem 93 

Generous Provision made by Venice for Pilgrims to tiio Holy Land.. 93 

CHAPTER VII. 

LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 

Founders of Religious Orders the passionate lovers of Christ Cru- 
cified 94 

Ignatius Loyola a Pilgrim to Jerusalem in 1523 95 

Angela Embarks for Palestine in May, 1524 97 

She is suddenly struck Blind on the Way 97 

Insists on Continuing her journey 97 

Her Raptures in Jerusalem and Bethlehem 98 

Memories which Enlighten her in Christ's Birth-place 100 

St. Jerome, St. Paula, and her daughter Eustochiuni 101 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LIGHT INCREASING. 

Return from Jerusalem through Rama 104 

Angela recovers her Eyesight Miraculously 108 

Dangers from Storms and Pirates 108, 109 

Angelo esteemed, under God, the Pilgrims* Preserver 109 

Admiration of the Venetians for her Ill 

She Escapes secretly from the City 113 

CHAPTER IX. 

WAITING AND WORKING. 

Angela warmly Welcomed by the Brescians 113 

New Obstacles to Angela's Designs 114, 115 



xiv CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

She goes to Rome for the Jubilee of 1525 116 

Explains her Vision to Pope Clement VII 118 

Returns to Brescia 118 

War-Clouds over Rome and Italy 119, 120 

CHAPTER X. 

INSUPERABLE OBSTACLES. 

Charles V. and Francis I. distract and devastate Upper Italy 121 

Brescia Paralyzed ; Religious Improvement impossible 122 

Angolans Self-Crucifixion amid these Calamities 123-126 

She is more than ever the Guide and Comforter of all Classes 127 

The Duke of Milan takes her for his Spiritual Guide 128 

Angela is obliged to take Refuge in Cremona 129 

She becomes the Public Comforter there 130, 131 

Vigorous Intellectual and Moral Life of Upper Italy in those 

Days 132,133 

Angela taken 111 and at Death's Door 135 

Her sudden Restoration to Perfect Health 136 

She makes a Pilgrimage to the Sacred Hill of Varallo 137 

Sudden Cessation of Hostilities 138 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE FOUNDATIONS AT LAST. 

Vision of St. Ursula and her Companions 140 

Delays enjoined on Angela by her Confessor 142 

The first Twelve Ursulines 143 

The high Aim Angela set before her Companions 144 

Second Pilgrimage to Varallo 145 

The Duke of Milan would have them stay in his Capital 146 

Angela fixes her Abode near the Church of St. Afra 147 

Increase of the Associates 150 

Why Angela sought the Aid of noble Widow Ladies 151 

How timely this Organization was for Italy 152 

How Nature repairs Wounds and Losses in Tree and Flower ; and 

how God repairs them in His Church 153, 154 

Reforms by renovated Home-life and Education 155, 156 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER XII. 

WHY ANGELA CALLED HER SISTERHOOD "THE COMPANY OF ST. 

URSULA/' 

PAGE 

The Legends concerning St. Ursula and her Band of Virgin- 
Martyrs 157 

The simple Historical Facts 158 

The Popular Legends in Upper Italy 159 

St. Ursula and. the Venetian Painters 160 

St. Ursula accepted as Patron Saint by the great Universities of 

Christendom 161 

Another Vision in which Angela is urged to hasten her Work 163 

The Company of St. Ursula formally inaugurated 163 

First Inauguration of the Society of Jesus , 164 

Fundamental Conception of an Ursuline's Life 165 

Why Angela did not wish to Oblige her Maiden Sisters to make 

Religious Vows 166 

She excludes no Class of the Deserving , 167 

Simple Dress of the Sisters 167 

Their Charity and Humility 167 

The wide Interest taken in them 168 

The word '' Company " suggestive of a Militant Life 169 

The two Great Armies who contended for Souls in the Italy of the 

Sixteenth Century 169 

Outlines of Angela's Organization 170 

How the Spirit of God directs Holy Men and Women 171-174 

The Nineteenth Century like the Sixteenth 174, 175 

CHAPTER Xm. 

ANGELA'S WORK — THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE COMPANY OF ST. 

URSULA. 

Her Self-Crucifixion while drawing up the Constitutions of the Com- 
pany 176 

The Cardinal-Bishop of Brescia approves them 179 

Angela is unanimously elected Superior-General. 181 

Election of the other Officers 182 

The Spiritual Directors of the new Company 183 

Was the Education of Young Girls the main purpose of Angela?. . 185 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAQE 

Testimony of the Holy See to the First Apostle of Female Educa- 
tion. 185-187 

Testimony of St. Charles Borromeo 188 

Brief Mention of Education in the Constitutions 189 

Angela wished to Educate in the Bosom of each Family 190 

Her Main Purpose to be Directed by Providence 191 

CHAPTER XIV. . 

THE LAST LABORS AND TRIALS— MOST BEAUTIFUL COUNSELS — THE 
STRONG WOMAN SETTING HER HOUSE IN ORDER. 

Belay in Obtaining the Approbation of the Holy See 192 

Opposition in Brescia to the Secular Dress of the Sisters 195 

Angela's Persistence in Prayer and Austerities 197 

Beginning of her Last Hlness 199 

She appoints a Mother- Vicar 199 

Dictates her Ricordi and her spiritual "Testament " 199 

Summons the Lady-Counselors to hear the Ricordi read 200 

Admirable Counsels of the Dying Saint 201-212 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE GATES AJAR — LOVE STRONG IN DEATH — THE PILGRIM AT REST. 

The Spectacle presented by the Sick-room at St. Afra's 214 

The disheartening Circumstances which color Angela's last Counsels 

to her Daughters 215 

The Motherly Tenderness she enjoins toward her Sisters 217 

Virtues which these are to Practice.. 219 

They are to Cherish above all Things the Honor of their Divine 

Spouse 219 

Ever-present Aid promised to them in Christ's Name 219 

Angela sits up in her bed to repeat the last ** Reminder" 220 

Deep Impression made on all Present 220, 221 

Consternation in Brescia. 222 

Her last Words to a few noble Frieuds 223 

Her scrupulous Care to prepare herself for Burial 224 

She receives the Last Sacraments 225 

Her angelic Devotion 226, 227 

Angela Merici's Mission , » . . 228 



CONTENTS, lYii 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A saint's testament and legacies — A people's gratitude and 

VENERATION— INCORRUPTION LASTING THROUGH CENTURIES. 

PAGE 

Angela's '' Testament and Legacies" to her Daughters 230-240 

Instinctive Veneration of true Sanctity by the Catholic Heart. . .240, 241 

Extraordinary Affluence from City and Country 242 

All proclaim her '* Blessed " , , , 243 

Delay in her Burial 243 

Veneration in all Ages for the Remains of the Saintly Dead 244 

The Delay of Thirty D^ys most Providential 245 

Prodigious Concourse of Pilgrims, and other Prodigies 245 

The Holy Remains preserved Incorrupt 246 

The Painters of Brescia at work around the Bier 247, 248 

End of the Delay ; the Solemn Entombment 248 

Tributes to the Saintly Dead 248 

A Scoffer Rebuked and Converted 250 

Changes made in Angela's Tomb 251 

Its Appearance and that of the Saint's Body in 1867 252-254 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE " ODOR OF SANCTITY " AND POPULAR VENERATION — MIRACULOUS 
FAVORS OBTAINED — DELAYS IN ANGELA'S BEATIFICATION AND 
CANONIZATION. 

The Good or 111 Odor diffused by every Christian's Life and Death. . 255 
Flocks in Alpine Regions attracted to their Mountain Pasture by the 

Fragrance of Spring Flowers 255 

The People of God drawn to the Shrines of his Saints by " the Sweet 

Odor" of Christlike Holiness 256, 257 

The Popular Veneration toward Angela Merici 258-260 

The Honors paid to her tacitly Sanctioned by the Holy See 261 

This Cultus becomes Universal 262 

First Judicial Proceedings toward Beatification 264 

Delays in Rome caused by the Dissensions with Louis XIV 265 

She is solemnly Beatified by Clement XIII. , 266 

Translation of Blessed Angela's Remains 267 

Appearance of the Body on this Occasion 267 



xviu CONTENTS. 

PAGS 

Contrast between this Triumpli of tlie Ursulines and tlie simultane- 
ous Downfall of tlie Jesuits ^ 269, 270 

Proceedings for Blessed Angela's Canonization , . .. , 270 

She is solemnly Canonized 271 

CHAPTER XVIIi: 

MIRACLES, AND VIRTUES AS MARVELOUS AS MIRACLES, 

Irresistible Authority of Miracles 273 

The Miracle-working Power to abide in the Church 274 

The Three Great Miracles wrought by St. Ange]|i, and accepted by 

the Congregation of Eites 275-281 

St. Angela's Heroic Virtues 283 

Her Prudence 285 

Her Temperance 291 

Her Justice 291 

Her Fortitude 291 

Her Supernatural Faith, Hope and Charity 292-294 

CHAPTER XIX. 

ST. ANGELA'S CONSTITUTIONS. 

They are her Principal Literary Production 295 

They breathe the Apostolic Spirit which passed into the Constitu- 

trons of the various Ursuline Congregations 296 

They deserve to be Preserved lovingly by Angela's Daughters 296 

Text of the Constitutions 297 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE URSULINES : THEIR VARIED FORTUNES IN ITALY — PRIMITIVE 
CONGREGATION OF BRESCIA — HOW THEY FARED IN MILAN — URSU- 
LINES OF VENICE, PARMA, PIACENZA, FOLIGNO, AND ROME. 

Dangerous Controversy about the Dress of the Ursulines 337 

The Ursulines in Desenzano and Said 339 

" Cremona 341 

Milan 342 

The Milanese Ursulines living in community and bound by vows, .. 344 



CONTENTS. xix 

PAQB 

The Ursulines in Venice 345 

Genoa * 345 

Parma 346 

** Piacenza and Foligno 347 

The Roman Ursulines, 347 

The Un cloistered Ursulines of SS. Rufina and Secunda 348 

The Cloistered Ursulines of the Via Vittoria, founded by the Duchess 

of Modena 348 

Vicissitudes of the Roman Ursulines 351-353 

Existing Monasteries of Calvi, Stroncone, Sesto-Calende, Cannobio, 

Galliate, Omegna, Miasino, and Saluzzo 353 

Fate of the Congregation of Brescia before and since the French Rev- 
olution 354 

Swept away by the First Napoleon 355 

Only a Single Monastery of Cloistered Nuns since 1827 355 

The Primitive Ursnlines of Brescia reviving under Pius IX 357-359 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE URSULINES IN FRANCE — CONGREGATIONS OP AIX, BORDEAUX, 
PARIS, LYONS, AND TOULOUSE. 

Frances de Bermond, of Avignon, the Angela Merici of France 360 

The First French Ursuline Establishment at L'Isle, near Avignon, . 863 

Frances de Bermond and Cardinal de Sourdis, of Bordeaux 363 

The Cardinal visits Milan 364 

He Chooses Frances de Cazeres to Found the Ursulines of Bordeaux. 365 
The Ursulines of Bordeaux become a Congregation of Cloistered 

Nuns 366 

Their Apostolic labors Described by Pope Paul V 369 

The Ursulines of Paris ; their beginnings 371 

Blessed Mary of the Incarnation (Madame Acarie) and her cousin, 

Madame De Sainte Beuve. .1 371, 372 

The Parisian Ursulines become Cloistered 373, 374 

Mother de Bermond Recalled from Paris to Aix 374 

She Founds the Monastery of Lyons 377 

Her Establishments wonderfully Multiplied 378 

The Lyonnese Congregation accept the Cloister. 379 

Death of Mother de Bermond 379 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAQB 

The CoDgregation of Toulouse 880 

The " Ladies of Mercy of St. Ursula " 381 

Extraordinary Fervor of the Toulouse Ursulines ,381, 382 

Other Congregations in France 382 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

OFFSHOOTS OF THE FRENCH URSULINES THROUGHOUT THE GERMAN 
AND AUSTRIAN EMPIRES, CANADA, THE UNITED STATES, IRE- 
LAND AND ENGLAND. 

Marvelous Fecundity of the Congregations of Bordeaux and Paris. . . 384 
Temporary Suppression of the Ursulines throughout Germany and 

the Low Countries by the French 384 

*• The May Laws " 385 

Landshut and Breslau 385 

The other Ursuline Schools of Austria-Hungary 385 

The American Ursulines ; 

Quebec and Three Rivers 386 

New Orleans 387-389 

The First Ursulines in New York Unsuccessful 389 

The Ursulines of East Morrisania ! 389 

The Ursulines of Boston 390 

The Tragic Story of the Charlestown Convent 391 

Archbishop Purcell and the Ursulines of the Western States 393 

Nano Nagle and the Irish Ursulines 393 

The Monastery of Black Rock and the Ursulines of South Carolina.. 394 
The Monastery School of Valle-Crucis, near Columbia, cruelly Des- 
troyed by Sherman's Army 395 

The Ursulines in England : The Monastery of. Upton, a Colony from 

Sittard in Limburg 395 

The Abbe Lambertz and the " Independent Ursulines " of Belgium . 396 
The Conditions under which Religious Communities can prosper 
among Modern Peoples 396 



LIFE OF ST. ANGELA MERICL 



CHAPTER I. 

INTEODUCTORY. 



It will help the readers of this book not a little toward un- 
derstanding the edifying story it tells, if we make them ac- 
quainted not only with thd beautiful country in which the 
heroine was born, but more especially still with the religious 
condition of the society among whom she was brought up. 
The flowers that bloom and the fruits that ripen in our 
gardens, as well as the harvests that grow in our fields, 
depend for their beauty, their fragrance, their excellence on 
the qualities of soil and atmosphere. Even so do the most 
heroic souls need for their growth and maturing the genial 
influences of earth and sky, the light and warmth of super- 
natural examples in the family home and the social world 
around it. 

To persons who may wonder at the early love of prayer, 
holy solitude, bodily austerity, the aversion to all worldly 
honor and pleasure, and the constant yearning to be in all 



2 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

things like the Crucified, — displayed by Angela Merici and 
her sister, by their near neighbor Aloysius Gonzaga (though 
born many years afterward), and so many others of the same 
age, and country, — we can only say, that even so was the 
child Samuel visited early by the divine favor, that Jeremias 
was sanctified from his birth for the lifelong struggle with 
the corruptions of God's people, and the impiety of their 
princes, and John the Baptist anointed by the outpouring of 
the Holy Spirit. 

The knowledge and love of Christ crucified, and of the 
glorious hosts of his followers in the road of crucifixion, 
were a thing as natural and familiar to the children of all 
Christian households in the year of grace 1474, as was the 
glorious aspect of the earth around their homes. Sainted 
followers of Him who for us crowned His own head with 
earth's bitterest thorns, and drank in death to the dregs its 
bitterest cup of woe, had tenanted while living the wildest 
crags and mountain solitudes of Northern as well as 
of Central Italy: around their hermitages and their tombs, 
chapels and monasteries had been reared, shining from afar 
all over the land, as lights pointing out to the crowds in 
city and plain the way to Christ-like holiness. 

Saintly men and women, whose names have been sol- 
emnly placed by the church on the catalogue of the Blessed, 
lived in every part of Italy, age after age, — saints of the 
cottage as well as of the palace, saints among the poorest 
classes as well as among the highest, shining amid the ob- 
scurity of the village hamlet in some retired valley of the 
Alps or the Apennines, as well as among the crowds and 
bustle and glitter of cities ; honoring the throne of the sov- 
ereign or the seat of the bishop ; saintly laymen, priests, and 
monks, sent, — not like the great Prophets of old, — from time 
to time, to thrill and rouse and raise the souls of a perverse, 



AND THE UMSULINES. 3 

a slumbering, or a fallen generation ; but succeeding each 
other, like the fair flowers of a southern clime that knows 
no winter, and in whose sunlight the beauteous buds of 
promise are evermore opening by the side of the golden fruit. 

Such, most truly, was the Italy of the fifteenth and the 
sixteenth centuries, to both of which belongs the heroic life 
we are about to tell. 

Let not the reader fancy for one m.oment that there is in 
this assertion anything approaching to exaggeration. A 
brief glance at a few only of the illustrious names thus 
honored and embalmed by the veneration of the people d,nd 
the infallible judgment of the Church, will settle all doubts 
on this point, and encourage us to pursue our theme with 
increased fervor and confidence. 

The parents of Angela Merici might, during their lifetime, 
have seen the persons or heard of the virtues of such holy 
personages as the Blessed Margaret of thB Royal House of 
Savoy (died 1467), and her saintly kinsman, the Blessed Duke 
Amadeus (died 1472). Both had spread far and wide through- 
out Northern Italy the fame of their goodness and holiness. 
Venice was blessed at the same epoch in the possession of a 
great man and a great saint on the episcopal seat, Lawrence 
Giustiniani (died 1455), while Florence gloried in the learn- 
ing and virtues of her own archbishop, St. Antonine. Filling 
the valleys of Southern Tyrol and Northern Venetia with the 
fruits of his apostolic zeal, lived Blessed Andrea Grego, born 
at Peschiera, on the picturesque shores of their own Lake 
Garda, — while they, like all the population of Northern 
Italy, had been thrilled and captivated by the eloquence and 
examples of such living saints as Vincent Ferrer, Francis of 
Paula, and Bernardine of Sienna. There were women, too, 
whose deeds of heroic sanctity w^ere no less celebrated by the 
grateful veneration of their contemporaries : the Blessed 



4 ST. ANGELA MERIGl 

Serafina D'Urbino, duchess of Pesaro (died 1478), St. Catherine 
of Bologna (died 1462), St. Louisa Albertone, whom all 
Rome worshiped, and that other Roman lady, even greater 
than she, Francesca Ponziani, or "St. Frances of Rome," as 
the capital of the Christian world in its gratitude delights to 
call her. 

But, without searching other parts of Italy for the illus- 
trious names of saintly men and women, who shone all over 
it during th middle of the fifteenth century, let us see what 
a galaxy of saints shed lustre on the immediate neighborhood 
of that same Lake of Garda, just at the very time Angela 
Merici was born (1474). The Blessed Catarina de Palanza 
was making the mountain pilgrimage of Varese dear to the 
surrounding populations by the sweet virtues of her last 
years (died 1478). St. Veronica, a poor, illiterate peasant 
girl, was then the wonder of all Milan and its territory. 
Blessed Maddalena Panatieri was equally revered in the 
neighboring city of Vercelli ; while in the diocese of Brescia, 
at Orzinovi, was just blooming into perfect womanhood and 
perfect holiness the Blessed Stefana Quinzani,and at Mantua 
the Blessed Osanna Andreasi, both destined to exercise so 
salutary an influence on Angela Merici's after-life. 

Then, again, if we consider the great practical purpose to 
which Angela gave up her whole existence,— the succoring 
of needy souls by heroic devotedness,— we shall find public 
opinion in every Italian community actively alive to the im- 
perative duty of instructing the ignorant, educating youth, 
and relieving every want of soul and body among the poor 
of Christ. 

Four years after the birth of our saint, in 1478, to the 
princely family of Tiene, in the neighboring city of Vicenza, 
was born a son destined to found an order of apostolic men, — 
the Theatines. It is only necessary, however, to say what 



AND THE UE8ULINE8, g 

kind of a woman the mother of the future St. Gaetano do 
Tiene was, to open out to our readers a most beautiful pros- 
pect of the womanly excellence and supernatural piety that 
graced Italian home-life in the fifteenth century. Maria 
Porta, countess of Tiene, was, like the Blessed Margaret of 
Savoy, and St. Jane, Queen of France, her contemporaries, 
a woman guided solely by the Spirit of God, a true Christian 
woman, who fulfilled perfectly every duty of wife, mother, 
and mistress of a household, while giving to God and to the 
needy everything which heart and hand could give. Like 
the mother of the great St. Francis of Assisi, before the birth 
of her boy, she had a secret presentiment that her child was 
destined to be a close follower of the Divine Babe of Bethle- 
hem. She wished that like Him, her son should be born in 
a stable, and to a stable she went to give birth to her first 
born, and would have him placed in a manger, thereby con- 
secrating him to poverty and self-sacrifice. How such a 
mother would rear her boy, and direct his thoughts and as- 
pirations to all that was most heroic and most generous, we 
need not inform the reader. Besides, the most authentic 
testimony in all modern history is there, in the story of the 
life of St. Gaetano and the solemn acts of 'his canonization, 
to show what Christian education meant in the truly Chris- 
tian ages. 

That same territory of Venice, — though sadly fallen away 
both from its pristine Christian fervor and its ancient su- 
premacy on the seas, — produced about the same time another 
glorious scion, worthy of the proudest days of patrician 
virtue. This was to be a devoted friend of Gaetano de Tiene 
and Angela Merici. He is still dear to the homeless and the 
orphan as St. Jerome Emiliani. Descended of the best no- 
bility of Venice, a soldier while yet in boyhood, in spite of 
his mother's entreaties and tears, Jerome plunged headlong 



6 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

into the excitement and licentiousness of warfare, was taken 
prisoner while bravely defending his trust, and found amid 
the horrors of his captivity, the light which showed him the 
depth of his own guilt, the vanity of the fame for which he 
thirsted, and the glory of serving Him, "whom to serve is to 
reign." Thenceforward his life became one of expiation, 
self-crucifixion, and boundless devotion to the cause of 
charity and Christian education. 

While Jerome Emiliani v/as still in his cradle, and Angela 
Merici was blooming into her lovely girlhood, a poor peasant 
girl born near Ravenna, stricken with blindness in infancy, 
and grown to womanhood amid a succession of trials and suf- 
ferings so unceasing and so fearful, that one is reminded of 
holy Job in the extremity of his affliction, — was also chastened 
and perfected like Job by the very extremity of ill. The 
bitterest portion of the deep cup she had to drain till she 
was long past the season of youth, came from the persecu- 
tions of those who should have been her protectors. But 
blessed Margaret's angelic patience and sweet humility dis- 
armed her detractors and made of them her friends and dis- 
ciples. Her bed of suffering became the chair from which 
she taught supernatural wisdom. City and country folk 
soon thronged to gaze upon the weak suiferer, to learn from 
her lips and her life the secrets of holiness, and to reform 
their own conduct on the model of one who was the living 
image of the Crucified. 

They united, — the choice souls among them, at least, — to 
form a society called the " Confraternity of the Good 
Jesus," for which she drew up rules. Three hundred of the 
most distinguished citizens of Ravenna and its vicinity, thus 
bound themselves to holiness of life, and the practice of 
heroic charity. The Blessed Margaret died on January 23rd, 
1505. Her influence, however, was to effect a still greater 



AND THE URSULINES, 7 

good after her death. Among her disciples was a holy widow, 
now known among God's saints as the Blessed Gentile 
Pianella, the wife of a tradesman. She it is who converted 
a worldly priest into an apostle, and made of that priest, 
since so widely known as the Venerable Jerome Maluselli, 
the founder of the first body of Regular Clerks recognized 
by tjie Church, " The Regular Clerks of the Order of the Good 
Jesus." Thus the humble sodality established by the Blessed 
Margaret brought forth a religious order long blessed by the 
population of l^orthern and Central Italy; the humble shrub 
planted near the blind girl's grave, growing up into a lordly 
tree, and bearing fruits of salvation for the entire region. 

Th^ atmosphere of the Christian home in Italy, — and, 
through it, the social atmosphere of the great busy, warring 
world outside, — was filled with the sweet odor of Christ, even 
Christ crucified. It was, under God, due mostly to the in- 
fluence of woman, — true mothers, wives, and maidens, — from 
whom men learned to be true and brave, and self-denying 
and self-sacrificing, — the love of all that was beautiful in 
God's world, and the practice of all that was heroic and en- 
nobling in His religion. 

Such were some of the life-giving influences which met 
Angela Merici in her native land and from her infancy. We 
have only pointed out a very few, to enable the reader to 
study the religious and social condition of Italy during the 
age of Christopher Columbus, and thus to form an intelli- 
gent and independent judgment on the beautiful civilization 
which the Church had been creating and fostering in spite of 
the constant and relentless hostility of the Powers of Evil. 
Now, dear reader, only think of the magnificent array of 
living saints whom Angela Merici left behind her the year 
of her happy death. She breathed her last on January 27, 
1540. In Rome, April 7th of the following year, Francis 



8 BT. ANGELA MEBICl 

Xavier tore himself away from the fatherly embrace of Igna- 
tius Loyola, whom he loved with a love so pure and so deep, 
to travel on foot all the way to Lisbon, before sailing for the 
East Indies. We have thus named, in these great twin- 
souls, the parents of an army of apostles and saints, who had 
then begun to extend their labors to the needy souls of both 
hemispheres. But besides Xavier and Loyola, there lived at 
the death of Angela, a host of other saintly men and women, 
some only of whom have received the honors of canonization 
or beatification. 

St. Teresa was then in her twenty-fifth year ; St. John of 
the Cross, Teresa's helj)-mate in the great work of religious 
reformation, was in his second ; St. Charles Borromeo, who 
was to consummate and crown the work of St. Angela, was 
in his fourth year, watched over, at Arona, amid the grand 
scenery of Lago Maggiore, by his pious mother, or kneeling 
with her at Brescia, among the pilgrims crowding to the 
lowly grave of that same Angela, or visiting with her the 
home in which the saint was born at Desenzano, on the 
sunny shores of the Lake of Garda. St. Philip Neri, in 1540, 
was in his twenty-sixth year, in the beautiful springtide of 
Ms holiness, — and the Dominican monk, Michael Ghisleri, 
destined afterward to save and to edify all Christendom un- 
der the name of St. Pius V., was in his thirty-seventh year ; 
— Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, destined also to be the 
most efficient help-mate of St. Pius in the crusade which 
broke forever^ the power and pride of the Mohammedan,^- 



1 It is not generally known that St. Francis Borgia, then general of his society, waa 
sent by St. Pius V., in conjunction with the papal legate, to exhort the kings of Spain 
and Portugal to unite their forces with those of Venice and the Holy See in order to 
crush the Turkish power. It was the last of the crusades. Borgia's saintly presence in 
the Spanish court, where he had formerly shone as the model of the Castilian nobility, 
obtained from Philip II. all that the Pope desired. And thus was organized the ex- 
pedition which won the glorious victory of Lepanto, Oct. 7, 1570. 



AND THE URSULINES. 



9 



was in his thirtieth year^ the envy and the model of Spain's 
nobility, as St. Thomas of Villanova, Archbishop of Valen- 
cia, was, at the same time, the model of her bishops and the 
father of her people. Indeed, Spain was, in that age, the 
wonder of Christendom by the number of her saints. But we 
would fain not turn away the reader's attention from Italy. 
St. Camillo de Lellis, St. Felix Cantalicio, St. Serafino de 
Monte Granario, St. Andrew Avellino, the Blessed Paul of 
Arezzo, and Blessed Alexander Sauli, the Apostle of Corsica, 
the bosom friend and counsellor of St. Charles Borromeo, 
were all growing up to the full stature of Christ-like hero- 
ism, while Angela Merici was impatiently yearning to be at 
rest with Christ. 

From the foot-hills of the Alps which overshadowed her 
home in Brescia, to the southernmost coast of Sicily, where 
lived, beautiful in soul and angelic in life, the Blessed Bene- 
dict of Filadelfo, a man of the much-despised negro race,— 
there was not a city, or a noted country place, in which some 
such saintly men or women, were not keeping before the 
eyes of the living generation the ideal virtues which are the 
soul of Christian life and the aim of all Christian generosity. 

To be sure, only a few of the many souls who were. thus 
foremost in the race of sanctity, have left names behind to 
be known and revered of all succeeding Christian ages. We 
of this barren nineteenth century, and denizens of a land un- 
blessed by the splendor of a single sainted name, are apt to 
think that the God-like personages deserving of the honors 
of canonization resemble those rare and gigantic flowers 
of the Brazilian forests, which cannot thrive or live on our 
barren northern soil, and beneath the illiberal and uncertam 
warmth of our sun. On the contrary, sanctity is like the 



» The magnificent water-lily known as the Victoria Regina, 



10 ST. ANGELA MERICL 

sweet and modest flowers which bloom and thrive in every 
land fit for the habitation of man — like the wheat and the 
corn which ripen best for man's uses amid the cooler plains 
and valleys and under the showery skies of the temperate zone. 
Ah, He who is the ever-present Sun of Righteousness, as He 
daily encircles the earth in the course of His Fatherly 
Providence, pours into our minds th<3 light, and into 
our hearts the warmth, which move them to aim at 
Godlike excellence and enable them to attain it. His all- 
wise, and untiring care of the souls which He constantly urges 
onward and upward to height above height of holiness and per- 
fection — never fails to attemper, for the special measure of each 
dear soul's need, both the ardor of the surrounding atmos- 
phere and the rigor of its severest colds, to govern for our 
souls' welfare every accident and event which may befall 
them here below. Dear to Him, and most dear, is the soul 
of the poor blind peasant girl of Ravenna, beset from in- 
fancy to womanhood and old age, with the bitterest trials 
which can assail the sensibilities of a heart born truly noble, 
or test the patience of the most heroic temper; most dear 
also that other poor servant-maid of Milan (St. Veronica), 
who found time, amid her own hard and manifold labors, to 
aid and comfort the weak of limb or of heart around her, 
and created from out the resources of her own poverty, — of 
her overrich charity and holiness, rather, — hospitals for the 
sick, and asylums for infirm old age, and orphaned infancy. 
Surely, most dear too, are such royal souls as Maria and 
Gaetano de Tiene, as Margaret and Amadeus of Savoy, as 
Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier and Francis Borgia, and 
that good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep, 
Charles Borromeo, — to choose one holy bishop among many. 
Beautiful is the royal rose that is the pride of our gardens, 
but beautiful none the less are the thousand lowly flowerets 



AND THE URSULINE8, H 

that display their timid loveliness and shed their sweet 

fragrance in the secret places of hillside, valley, and forest . 

near the shady brook which steals through our meadows or 
on the borders of some unknown lake in the wilderness. 
There is not one of these gweet and beauteous creatures but 
is the object of the great Creator's care, — daily visited by 
the beams of His sun in the heavens. Nor is there, among 
the thousands of obscure souls most dear to the God who is 
the lover of souls, the passionate lover of holiness, — a single 
one that is not the especial care and dear delight of His 
angels and Himself. Astronomy teaches us that the stars 
which are brightest in our firmament are not the largest in 
size, that the smallest visible to the naked eye are incom- 
parably greater than those whose splendor charms us after 
sunset or before sunrise. Nay, it is no improbable con- 
jecture, that our sun, surpassing as we know him to be in size, 
and transcendent in life-giving light and warmth to all the 
heavenly bodies near, our earth, is nevertheless far surpassed 
in volume and splendor by myriads of stars placed beyond 
the reach of the naked eye, or of the instruments devised by 
science to aid the investigator. 

So, there may be, — nay, there are doubtless, — in every age 
thousands of souls who delight in living for God alone, and 
whose sole aim and prayer is to die unknown to men, and to 
remain forever unknown to human fame. They are known 
on high in the great society of the Blessed, — where true 
glory is securely reserved for them, — that glory which con- 
sists in being praised eternally by God, and by His angels 
and saints. 

They are known on earth, too, during their life-time, — 
though, it may be not widely known. Their influence, like that 
of our sweet and lowly flowers among the depths of the tangled 
forest, loads the atmosphere with a subtile fragrance which 



13 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

is felt and blessed by the traveler, though its cause remains 
unseen, hidden beneath the surrounding undergrowth. Some- 
times, however, it so happens that God, whose holiness and 
power are glorified in His saints^ will cause the name of these 
hidden creations of His grace to come forth into the full 
light of publicity long ages after they have passed away from 
earth, just as we see stars hitherto invisible emerge from the 
depths of space, and astonish by their brilliancy the skilled 
observers of every land. 

It may, however, assist us greatly toward understanding 
the spirit which directed the aims and inspired the actions of 
Angela Merici and her sister, while as yet little more than 
children, — if we glance at the doings and sayings of one or 
two of the saintly women, whose names were household 
words in Northern Italy at the close of the fifteenth century, 
and whose lives were the frequent topic of conversation in 
Christian households. Two personages, taken from opposite 
social conditions, will serve our purpose admirably. 

Here we have, in the first instance, a farmer of the 
poorest class of the Lombard peasantry a man whose unre- 
mitting toil barely enables him to ward off from his dear ones 
pinching want and the degradation to a family consequent 
on extreme poverty. In 'his poor household, however, as in- 
deed among the peasant clashes of Catholic countries in the 
ages of living faith, though book-learning there was none, 
there was, nevertheless, that lofty education of the soul, which 
religion never fails to give to all who are docile to her teach- 
ing and lovingly practice her precepts. Such a parent had 
St. Veronica of Milan. So well principled was he, and so 
much was he guided in all his actions by the fear of God, 
that, on the markets of Milan w^here he brought for sale the 
produce of his farm and home-industry, he would never allow 
purchasers to buy from him without fully acquainting them 



AND THE URSULINE8. 13 

with the imperfections of what he sold. His was a poverty- 
full of contentment and holy joy, privations and hard work 
being seasoned by a cheerfulness which no change of season or 
increase of adversity could ever cloud for a moment. 

His daughter Veronica's temper and disposition partook 
of the brightness of this sunny home. Her parents trained 
her from her cradle to the most tender piety, and she became 
perforce the companion of all their toil and hardship even 
before she had ceased to be a child. The sons and daughters 
of Christian homes were early taught to have ever before 
their eyes as their model, the adorable Son of Mary — born to 
poverty, labor, obedience, and suffering.. In His footsteps 
the little Veronica advanced rapidly in all grace and loveli- 
ness. She worked with incredible ardor, and, while helping 
her poor parents in every way her strength permitted, she 
cheered and charmed them by her childish joyousness, and her 
little loving industries. They had taught her to love prayer 
as a conversation with the invisible but ever-present Almighty 
Goodness, and her fervor in prayer even surpassed her ardor 
for work. In the house and in the field the child showed 
herself to be an angel without ever ceasing to be a child. 

Her beautiful maidenhood was only the continuation of 
her gracious childhood; she shone on the neighbors as she 
did on her parents, as an angelic being sent on earth for some 
merciful purpose. 

Both parents, indeed, much as they needed her, and greatly 
as their happiness depended on her dear companionship, felt 
as she grew up to be wise and holy beyond what they ad- 
mired in the best people, that they must not think of earthly 
bridals for their Veronica. And still when she was old 
enough to choose her own path in life, there seemed to be 
an insuperable obstacle to the accomplishment of their and 
her dearest wishes. She felt drawn irresistibly toward the 



14 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

Augustinian Sisterhood of St. Martha in Milan, — famed 
throughout the land for austerity of life. But she could 
not bring to them the usual dower; nor could she so much 
as read and write. She resolved to overcome this latter im- 
pediment, however ; and so, while giving up her days to the 
necessary labor which the poverty of her family rendered 
imperative, she worked by night, — alone and in the greatest 
secrecy, to teach herself to read and write, and to educate 
herself in the beginnings of secular knowledge. Of course, 
she succeeded. But it is said of her that she had to contend 
with the most disheartening difficulties, such difficulties in- 
deed, that one day our Blessed Lady consoled her by a vision. 
"Do not be cast down," the heavenly voice said to her. 
** Suffice it to you to know three things as the alphabet of 
spiritual knowledge : First, the purity of heart which ever 
aims at loving God above all things, and in only loving other 
things in conformity with His will ; the second is, never to 
complain, never to show impatience at seeing the short-com- 
ings of others, but to bear with them sweetly and to pray 
for their correction ; and the third is, to set apart each day 
a time for reading the divine book of the crucifix, and con- 
templating the sufferings of the Crucified." Three years of 
such discipline as this fitted our little maiden for her super- 
natural calling. She brought with her treasures of goodness 
and knowledge which made her the light and glory of the 
Sisterhood, — a wonder and a fruitful source of blessing to 
the city and territory of Milan. The little peasant girl be- 
came the guide and counsellor of the greatest and the most 
learned in Church and State, as well as the indefatigable 
providence and comforter of the poor. And she was all this 
because her constant study of Christ crucified transformed 
her into a living image of the Virgin-Mother who had, of all 
created beings, known Him best, loved Him most tenderly, 



AND THE URSULINES, 15 

and followed Him most closely, from the manger to the cross. 

This ideal of Christian holiness was, then, as familiar to 
high and low in Milan, as w^ere the practical methods used 
in the culture of the vine throughout the length and breadth 
of Lombardy. Every class of its people, from the earliest 
Christian ages, had known how to judge of supernatural 
goodness, how to appreciate the beauty of godliness, as in- 
fallibly as they could estimate the qualities of the grape, or 
the flavor of their wines. 

Another holy member of the Augustinian order, living 
at the same time in Genoa, furnishes a further and still more 
striking illustration of the truth we are here endeavoring to 
inculcate. The Genoese saint, however, is a woman of the 
world, born in the highest rank, and educated as became her 
rank. Catherine Fieschi Adorno, by birth the daughter of 
a viceroy of Naples, by marriage the wife of one of Genoa's 
proudest patricians, had tasted of all the bitterness of wedded 
life, and felt all the emptiness of worldly greatness. In her 
father's house, and while still under the loving care of her 
Christian mother, Catherine had been just what St. Veronica 
was at the same age, — angelic in body and mind, — passion- 
ately devoted to Christ and His Blessed Mother, and finding 
her supreme delight in reading about His passion, or in con- 
templating objects of art which portrayed His sufferings. 
Though solely bent on consecrating herself to His service 
and that of His poor, she had to conform to the will of her 
family and become the wife of Giuliano Adorno, a scion of 
one of the most powerful families in the ancient republic. 
The ten years of her wedded life was a long martyrdom 
endured, — and not in vain, — for the purpose of winning to 
God the soul of her profligate husband. She had even re- 
laxed the austerity of her life, and mingled for a while in the 
gay throng around her, in order the better to shield and to 



16 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

save her companion. This was a serious mistake, of which 
she afterward bitterly repented. 

In 1474, — the very year of Angela Merici's birth, Catherine 
Adorno, then in her 27th year, took up the cross in earnest to 
follow her Lord and Master, Christ. Her whole life, from 
that moment, became one uninterrupted act of heroic devo- 
tion to the poor and suffering. So great was her austerity, 
so unearthly the life of crucifixion she led, that nothing short 
of a miracle could have enabled her to live at all, especially 
when one considers how unceasing and arduous her labors 
were. In the admirable writings which she has left us, there 
is a mine of spiritual knowledge inferior in wealth only to 
the works of the great St. Teresa. Among her works is a 
dialogue in three books, in which the speakers are the Body, 
the Soul, Self-love, the Intellect, and the Sacred Humanity 
of our Lord. The purpose of the writer is to point out clearly 
the path through which Grace led her from her own state of 
imperfection to the most elevated degree of spirituality. 
The conception as well as the execution of this charming 
treatise is worthy of the best age of Italian literature. 

"I saw," she tells us in the beginning, "a Soul taking 
counsel with her Body. The Soul spoke first and said : 

^'Body mine, God hath created me to love and enjoy bliss, 
and I am desirous of seeking where I can satisfy my yearn- 
ing ; and I also wish that you would quietly follow me, inas- 
much as my contentment would contribute to your own. We 
shall go forth into the world, and wherever I find any good 
that delights me, I shall forthwith enjoy it. Even so shall 
you do with what thing soever pleaseth you, and when either 
of us finds anything still better^ then shall we both be free to 
possess ourselves of it. 

"Although," replied the Body, "I cannot help doing your 
pleasure, I perceive, notwithstanding, that you cannot have 



AND THE UBSULINE8, 17 

what you will without me. If, therefore, we are to journey 
together pleasantly, let us come to some understanding that 
may prevent all future jars." 

And so they agree to take Self-love with tlaem, to be an 
impartial umpire, should any difference of opinion arise. 
They are to go their own way, and seek t^eir own pleasure, 
each a week in its turn, — beginning with the Soul, who is 
the nobler of the two. 

'* The Soul then said to herself : I who am pure and stain- 
less, shall begin by considering how I was created and how 
many other benefits I owe to my Creator. I acknowledge 
that I was made for such unspeakable blissf ulness, and raised 
to so sublime a dignity, that I almost surpass the angelic 
orders, seeing that I am a spiritual being of a nature almost 
divine, and drawn so powerfully to meditate upon divine 
thingvS, and then to feed upon the very bread of angels. I 
am, of my nature, invisible to fleshly eyes, and therefore seek 
my food and my delight in things unseen ; since for this was 
I created. In this I find my peace, and this contemplation is 
my only need ; and from this food I draw the strength which 
lifts me up to heaven, and enables me to put the world be- 
neath my feet. Wherefore, during this entire week, I shall 
make of such contemplation my sole sustenance. Of other 
food I have no need or care : let who needs it feed upon it !" 

Of course the Body is not satisfied with such ethereal diet 
as this, while Self-love, who ever inclines toward the enjoy- 
ment of the good things in this world, is as ill content as the 
Body. The latter's turn has now come. 

" This is my week !" the Body exclaims. '' Therefore 
come thou with me, O Soul, that I may show thee how many 
things God hath created for my use. See the heavens above 
us and the earth around and beneath us, with all their splen- 
did array. See the sea with its swarms of fish, and the air 



18 ST. ANGELA MERIGl 

with its flocks of birds. And then consider the kingdoms 
that cover the face of the globe, with their various princi- 
palities, provinces, cities, the dignities possessed by both 
church and state ; the hoarded treasures of wealth, and the 
refined pleasures which wealth commands, — music and har- 
mony, banquets with their varied delicacies, — all destined 
for my sustenance and pleasure, and all capable of affording 
innocent enjoyment, without offence to the Creator. Thou 
didst not introduce me into thy invisible country, as I have 
now shown thee mine. Nevertheless, as I cannot enjoy all 
these things created for me, unless thou condescend to 
help to taste them and take delight in them,— I must remind 
thee that thou art greatly indebted to me for all these 
varied sources of joy, and that thou must not soar away 
above this earth and leave me on it without my own neces- 
sary nourishment. Besides, my concern also is that thou 
shouldst secure thy salvation for the life to come, because 
my lot is inseparable from thine. Thou must not fancy, 
then, that I am asking thee to do what is contrary to reason 
or sinful before God." 

Self-love, to whom the Body appeals^ decides that the Soul 
must yield and come down from its long contemplation, 
shorten its vigils and fasts, and not distress its companion 
by unnecessary privations. The soul, in its endeavors to 
satisfy both its fellow-travellers, is drawn by them, step by 
step, into the full enjoyment of what each requires, and 
then, by an easy transition, into sinful excess. From the deg- 
radation, the servitude, the guilt, and the remorse of this 
condition she is delivered by the divine light, which shows 
her, on the one hand, her ovvm miserable plight, and, on the 
other, the only road to liberty and salvation, — the subjecting 
both her companions to the iron yoke of her own will. Then 
begin a series of heroic struggles against sensuality, and all 



AND THE URSULINE8. 19 

the downward inclinations and affections of our poor nature. 
The allegorical veil which St. Catherine throws over the 
facts she recites, scarcely conceals her own real history in 
her progress upward to the sublimest heights of spiritual 
perfection. We see, in succession, the rigorous bodily austeri- 
ties by which sensuality was overcome. The Body is told 
bv his imperious companion, that he must be content to en- 
dure the bitterest privations, to give a willing aid even in 
doing the things most repugnant to sense, — with the pros- 
pect of enjoying, after the final victory is won, the blissful 
fruits of a peace which no sensual revolt may disturb and in 
which both Body and Soul shall be the docile instruments of 
the Spirit of God. We see, beneath the transparent veil of 
the allegory, Catherine learning the practice of the highest 
forms of 23rayer and contemplation, and then giving herself 
up, in the hospitals of Genoa, while serving the poor and the 
sick, to the most heroic acts of mortification and self-abase- 
ment. Wherever nature showed resistance and repugnance, 
there Catherine overcame it instantly and conquered it once 
for all. 

The Spirit of God, under whose guidance she wrote, in- 
spired her to leave us in substance the same practical doc- 
trine, which, some twenty years later. He dictated to Igna- 
tius Loyola in the Cavern of Manresa. The worldly-minded 
Soul is, at first, flooded with that supernal light which en- 
ables her to see clearly the end for which she was created, 
and the sweet, powerful, and ever-present means divinely 
provided for her to reach her sublime destiny. In this 
light, she perceives how far she has wandered away from the 
right road, and what a horrible misuse she has made of 
God's graces. The disorder of her conduct, the sinfulness 
of her life, her own moral deformity in God's sight, dawn 
upon her by degrees, while her own sense of guilt, of shame^ 



20 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

of horror, and of grief, increases from hour to hour. At this 
point, Christ Crucified is set before her, — as the victim and 
price which God demanded for sin, — for her sins in particu- 
lar, — and she understands, while kneeling at His feet, how 
infinite is the love which brought the Incarnate God to 
such a death, — and how horrible the ingratitude which has 
only repaid Him by forgetfulness and repeated transgres- 
sion. 

The Crucifix — Christ Crucified — is thenceforward the 
Book from which the Soul learns; its light is the only one 
which teaches her the measure of what she must do to ex- 
piate the past and to make herself most Christ-like in the 
future. 

Comparing her sinful self, as she has made herself by the 
misuse of all God's best gifts, — with her crucified Lord and 
Love, and with what He wished her to be, — she sets about 
reforming her whole life. She has now but one rule of 
action: to conform herself absolutely, immediately, and for- 
ever to the Divine Will. All else is indifferent to her. 
Here, again, — the Book of the Crucifix sheds its steady light 
on her way. He who came down from Heaven to reform 
the world and to teach it by His own example how to con- 
form in all things most perfectly to that Will which yearns 
solely for our sanctification, — noAv walks before the Soul from 
the Manger to the Cross. It is the Royal Road of divine 
generosity, — the light constantly increasing as the soul ad- 
vances in the footsteps of the Master and Model, and with 
that light an ever-increasing fire warming the heart of the 
Christian to emulate the poverty, the self-renouncement, the 
humility, the obedience of the God-man, — who was obe- 
dient unto death, even the death of the Cross. 

Here the doctrine of St. Ignatius is so identical with that 
of St. Catherine, — that one must see it is the teaching of 



ANB THE URSULINES, 21 

the same Spirit. It is addressed especially to chosen souls 
who are called to renounce all things and follow Christ. 
The form in which St. Catherine puts it applies to the se- 
clusion of the convent, the hospital, the school-room, or the 
hermit's cell. The steps by which the converted Soldier of 
Manresa leads the soul forward, are intended to lift apos- 
tolic men above every worldly repugnance and affection, 
till they become all athirst for the humiliations and suffer- 
ings of their crucified Master. To be more like Him, and 
thereby to glorify His Father more, — they will seek the 
Cross in all things. 

The first stage on the road to.ward holiness, — that in which 
the soul purges away her own stains and conceives the m- 
tense desire to do something worthy of Christ crucified, — 
has been happily expressed by two Latin words, Deformata 
reformare^ — " to reform (by penance) the deformity of one's 
conduct." The second stage, in which the soul, thus purified, 
proceeds further, under the guidance of Almighty grace, to 
follow Christ and become Christ-like in all things, has been 
expressed no less happily by reformata conformare^ — the con- 
forming Christ as a model to one's reformed life. Now, 
as nothing so confirms or strengthens a servant in generous 
fidelity toward his master as to suffer for him or to share his 
sufferings, — even so the meditation on Christ's passion and 
fellowship with Him in suffering and humiliation, marvel- 
lously strengthen the soul in heroic devotion : this is the 
meaning of the formula expressing the third stage in the 
*' Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius : conformata con- 
firmare. 

The transformed state of our Lord, after His resurrection, 
furnishes the fourth stage, expressed by the words, confir- 
Tnata transformare. It is the condition of one in whom 
body and soul, thanks to the crucifixion of all sensuality and 



22 'Sr. ANGELA MERIGl 

earthly affectiofis, become the instrument of the Holy Spirit, 
living here below a life which seems an anticipation of the 
condition of the Blessed, enjoying a close and unbroken 
union with the Divine Majesty, transported beyond them- 
selves and transformed by His love, and, like an overflow- 
ing vessel, pouring their over-abundance on all around 
them. 

It Avas the condition of St. Paul, after having been taken 
up to Heaven, when he declared that he no longer lived, but 
that Christ it was who lived in him. It was that of St. 
Ignatius in the last years of his life, when the vision of the 
Divine Beauty became so habitual and overpowering, that 
his soul was flooded with ecstatic ardors. What else made 
Xavier, as he ran his giant race in India and Japan, to bare 
his burning bosom to the night air, exclaiming, "Not so much 
sweetness, O Lord ! Not so much sweetness !" Or kept 
the eye of his soul so constantly fixed on the uncreated love- 
liness, that he was heard, as he hurried along the streets and 
highways, to cry out continually, "O most holy Trinity! 
most holy Trinity !" as if for him the veil of our mortality 
was withdrawn, and he was given to gaze upon the Sun of all 
blissfulness and eternal joy ! Again, — to take from Italy 
another and more popular instance, — was not St. Francis of 
Assisi marked, while yet living on earth, with the sacred 
wounds of his Master, Christ ? Did not the Crucified draw 
this passionate lover of the cross up to Himself by cords that 
reached and pierced hands and feet and heart through the 
transpierced side, — making him also drunk with the bitter- 
sweet of His passion-cup, and sending him forth, in the in- 
toxication of the love which transformed him, to preach of 
that love to all men, even to the very beasts and birds that 
he met with ? 

"In this seraphic apparition," says the historian of his life. 



AND THE URSULINES. 23 

" Christ spoke certain high and secret things to St. Francis, 
saying, ' Knowest thou what I have done to thee? I have 
given thee the stigmata which are the ensign of My passion, 
that thou mayest be my standard bearer.' And when the 
marvelous vision disappeared, upon the hands and feet of St. 
Francis the print of the nails began immediately to appear, 
as he had seen them in the body of Christ crucified. In like 
manner, on the right side appeared the image of an unhealed 
wound, as if made by a lance, still red and bleeding, from 
which drops of blood often flowed and stained the tunic of 
St. Francis. Although these sacred wounds impressed upon 
him by Christ, afterward gave great joy to his heart, yet 
they caused unspeakable pain to his body; so that, being 
constrained by necessity, he made choice of Brother Leo, 
for his great purity and simplicity, and suffered him to touch 
and dress his wounds on all days, except during the time 
from Thursday evening to Saturday morning, for then he 
would not by any human remedy mitigate the pain of Christ's 
passion, which he bore in his body, because at that time our 
Saviour Jesus Christ was taken and crucified and died for us." 
Another account of this wonderful vision, — a vision com- 
memorated in the Church of God by a solemn yearly festival, 
goes on to say : "Then did all the Monte Alvernia appear 
wrapped in intense fire, which illuminated all the mountains 
and valleys around, as it were the sun shining in his strength 
upon the earth, whence the shepherds who were watching 
their flocks in that country were filled with fear, as they 
themselves afterward told the brethren, afl[irming that this 
light had been visible on Monte Alvernia for upwards of an 
hour, and because of the brightness of that light, which 
shone through the windows of the inn where they were rest' 
ing, muleteers who were travellirg in the Romagna arose in 
haste, supposing that the sun had risen, and saddled and 



24 JST. ANGELA MERICL 

loaded their beasts; but as they journeyed on they saw that 
light disappear, and the visible sun arise." 

Surely, — as generation of Christians succeeds to genera- 
tion, and the great battle goes ever on of souls contending 
with the flesh, and the world, and the pride of worldly life^ 
it is needful that the Spirit of God should raise up among 
us saintly men and women, to whom He gives this consecra- 
tion of sanctity begotten of suffering and self -crucifixion, in 
order that they may thus become the standard-bearers of 
the Crucified, and call beneath their banner heroic souls 
fired with the generosity which animates themselves. 
Surely, too, the light of such examples, heaven sent as it is, 
will at least be understood and hailed with rapture and re- 
membered lovingly by the poor toilers of the land. Listen 
to what a Protestant writes of Monte Alvernia, — the wild 
and lofty theatre of St. Francis' holy contemplation. 

"La Vernia is one of the few religious shrines which have 
not been confiscated by the avarice of the Sardinian gov- 
ernment. Fortunately it belonged to the Arte di Lana 
(woolen weavers) who conceded it to the Grand Dukes (of 
Florence) ; they in their turn made it over to the Munici- 
pality of Florence, who have defended their property. . . . 
Most beautiful are the forest walks behind the convent, 
fragrant with the memories of holy Franciscan monks. 'In 
these woods' — says Sir J Stephens — 'St. Francis wandered 
in the society of Poverty, his wedded wife, relying for sup- 
port on Him alone by whom the ravens are fed, and awak- 
ening the echoes of the mountains by his devout songs and 
ejaculations. Here, in the beech avenues, Brother James 
of Massa beheld in a vision all the Friars-Minor in the 
form of a tree, from whose branches the evil monks were 
shaken by storms into perdition, while the good monks were 
carried by the angels into life eternal. Here the venerable 



AND THE URSULINES. 25 

Brother John of Fermo wandered, weeping and sighing in 
the restless search after divine love, till, when his patience 
was sufficiently tried, Christ the Blessed appeared to him in 
the forest-path, and with many precious words restored to 
him the gift of divine grace. And 'for a long time after, 
whenever Brother John followed the path in the forest 
where the blessed feet of Christ had passed, he «aw the 
same wonderful light, and breathed the same ir^weet 
odor,' which had come to him with the vision of his 
Saviour.'"^ 

Let us not pass away from this sacred spot to follow An- 
gela Merici in her career of self-sacrifice, without becoming 
more and more penetrated with the spirit of the place. The 
same Author, — though differing so vridely with us in belief, 
— evidently lingers lovingly on these rugged summits along 
whose heights St. Francis, six hundred and fifty years ago, 
led his followers heavenward. "The whole of the way 
(upward along the steep ascent) is alive with the recollec- 
tions of St. Francis. ... It was in the woods which we 
pass through that he vanquished demons in conflict, during 
his first ascent, while his companions, overwhelmed with 
fatigue, had fallen asleep in the shade. Then, ' beating his 
breast, he sought after Jesus, the beloved of his soul, and 
having found Him at last, in the secret of his heart, now he 
spoke reverently to Him as his Lord, now he made answer 
to Him as his Judge, now he besought Him as his Father, 
now he conversed with Him as his friend. On that night, 
and in that wood, his companions awaking and listening to 
him, heard him with many tears and cries implore the di- 
vine mercy in behalf of sinners.' Leaving the wood we 
enter upon the steeper and hotter path of the ascent, where, 



1 Hare, Cities of Northern and Central Italy, Tol. iii., pp. ^34, 23&-41. 



26 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

'The next morning his companions, knowing that he was 
too weak to walk, went to a poor laborer of the country, 
and prayed him, for the love of God, to lend his ass to 
Brother Francis, their father, for he was not able to travel 
on foot. Then that good man made ready the ass, and with 
great reverence caused St. Francis to mount thereon. And 
when they had gone forward a little, the peasant said to St. 
Francis — ' Tell me, art thou Brother Francis of Assisi V — * 
And St. Francis answered, ' Yes.' — ' Take heed, then,' said 
the peasant, ^ that thou be in truth as good as all men ac- 
count thee; for many have great faith in thee. And there- 
fore I admonish thee to be no other than what the people 
take thee for.' And when St. Francis heard these words, 
he was not angry at being thus admonished by a peasant, 
but instantly dismounting from the ass, he knelt upon 
the ground before that poor man; and, kissing his feet, 
humbly thanked him for that his charitable admon- 
ition.' " 

Such divine examples had ever been the result of the 
teaching of the Church and the practice of the God-like vir- 
tues which followed that teaching. The disorders begotten 
of political revolutions and worldly passions, and the scan- 
dals that offeii led in every age the true Christian, — were 
the fruit of the world's teaching, and to be solely attributed 
to its spirit. 

Certain it is that the fertile plains of Lombardy, the 
teeming territory of Venice, the valleys and mountains 
around the Lake of Garda, were as familiar with the soul- 
stirring narratives borrowed from the Life of St. Francis, as 
was beautiful Florence ard the wild tracts surrounding 
Monte Alvernia, or Genoa the Magnificent, in the days 
of St. Catherine Fieschi Adorno. All these doctrines re- 
lating to supernatural sanctity, and all the heroic lives 



AND THE UBSULINES, 37 

that illustrated them in the present age or in the glorious 
past, were as well known in the home of the Merici as 
they were in that of the noble Tiene at Vicenza, of the Gon- 
zagas at Mantua and Castiglione, or the Borromeos at 
Arona. 



CHAPTER II. 

4 

PIOUS PARENTS AND ANGELIC CHILDREN. 

Northern Italy is singularly favored by nature in the 
fertility of its soil, its singularly healthful climate, the steep 
mountain-wall which protects its fields, on the north and 
west, against the cold winds which sweep over Switzerland 
and Tyrol, as well as the no less destructive blasts borne 
across the Mediterranean from the coast of Africa. But a no 
less singular feature of this privileged land are the series of 
most beautiful lakes which extend from Lake Orta, in the 
west, to the Lake of Garda in the east. These, inclosed as 
they are among the lofty foot-hills of the Alps, and running, 
all of them, in a northerly direction, from where they join 
the fertile uplands of Lombardy and Venetia, to the wild 
and sublime scenery of the great Alpine valleys, afford to 
the thrifty populations of the adjacent countries an easy 
means of intercourse and traffic. In our day every one of 
the larger lakes can boast of steamers on its bosom. 

The largest, if not the most beautiful, of these great bodies 
of water, is the Lake of Garda, the Benacus of the Romans, 
fourteen miles broad from Desenzano to Peschiera, at its 
southern extremity, and thirty-seven miles long from the 
former place to the picturesque town of Riva in the north, 
where the lake penetrates for some miles into the Tyrolean 
mountains. Its clear blue waters* which are upward of a 

28 



ST. ANGELA MERICL 29 

thousand feet in dej^th, teem with the most delicious fish, 
although, from the remotest times, its surface is subject to 
storms which vie in fury with those of the ocean. 

It may be said to be shut in on all sides by lofty moun- 
tains or hills, — as around its southern end, — which slope 
away like an amphitheatre from the shore. It is, therefore, 
sheltered on all sides ; and, thus protected from the rigors 
.and changes of an Alpine climate, — its shores. m springtide 
and summer resemble rather the environs of Naples than any 
other portion of Northern Italy. The peninsula of Sermione, 
which runs out for several miles into the lake where it is 
broadest, divides it into two equal parts, and is covered with 
olive groves and vineyards, with a noble medieval castle and 
Roman ruins at its lofty extremity, where once stood the 
luxurious residence of one of Rome's most famous poets. 
Another Roman poet, far greater than he^, has again and 
again described the lovely country beheld from the declivi- 
ties of Sermione. One has only to travel along the south- 
western borders of the Lake from the foot of the Peninsula 
to Desenzano, and thence to the lovely town and magnificent 
bay of Salo, to find that his road lies beneath one endless 
citron grove, with hills covered with olives and vines, and 
fields of waving corn seen at intervals from the road- 
side. 

All the daylong, the precipitous walls of rock which close 
in upon the Lake toward the north, and the towering sum- 
mits beyond them with their everlasting snows, the rich hilly 
country at the south, the many beautiful towns, hamlets, 
castles and villas, w^hich gem both sides of this glorious ex- 
panse of water, and its own deep blue bosom, become to the 
eye one ever-changing and transcendently beautiful panor- 



I Virgil, a native of the neighbonng Mantua. 



30 ^T. ANGELA MERICI, 

ama, — so beautiful indeed, at sunrise and sunset, tliat the 
spot has ever been a favorite resort of artists. 

It is on these enchanted shores, in the town of Desenzano 
nestling in the southwestern corner of the Lake, that Ano-ela 
Merici first saw the light, on the twejity-first day of March, 
1474, according to the most reliable authorities. Her father's 
name was Giovanni Tommaso (John Thomas) Merici ; her 
mother's maiden name was Biancosi, from the neighboring 
town of Salo. Both families, at the time, were comfortable 
and respected proprietary farmers, — the Merici at least being 
registered among the burgesses of Brescia. Of the 
Biancosi, we can say that if they did not rank as nobles, 
they were even then held in great esteem, and received 
much additional lustre afterward from their matrimonial 
alliances with the noble families of Bertalozzi, the Counts 
Lanfranchi, and the Counts of Tracagno\ The Merici 
also, during the sixteenth century, were divided into 
several houses, acquiring no little fame from the achieve- 
ments of some of their members who lived in Manerba della 
Riviera and in Solarolo. At the beginning of the present 
century some scions of this house still remain at Darso in 
the vale Camonica. 

Angela was one of five children, of whom only an elder 
sister and a brother are mentioned by the biographers of 
our saints Certain it is that, whatever may have been the 



1 Salvatori. 

2 In the various biographies of this saint, which have come under our notice, there 
is a sad dearth of intelligence regarding not only her parents, but her brothers and 
sisters. Salvatori, who seems to have enjoyed the most ample sources of information, 
only mentions in detail the one brother and sister who play so important a part in 
Angela's early life. Of the two other children of John Merici no word is spoken,- - 
leaving the reader to conclude either that they had died before their parents, or that 
they were already married or settled in life, at the time of their father's death. Salva- 
tori, however, says positively that John Merici died in his fortieth year, — a very 
youthful age at which to have tw^o married children! A " Doctor Traca^no" i< spoken 



AND THE URSULIXES. 31 

social position and the wealth of Giovanni Merici, that both 
he and his wife were fervent Christians, intent on preserving 
their children from all taint of evil, and on filling their ten- 
der souls with the love of all goodness. 

In the preceding chapter we saw that several personages, 
since then honored by the Church as Saints, were living in 
the neighborhood of Desenzano, — persons who even then 
were the objects of universal reverence among all classes. 
St. Francis of Assisi also had visited the shores of 
Lake Garda, and stirred the hearts of its populations by his 
words of burning love and his angelic life. An entire 
island near the entrance to the bay of Salo had been given 
to him as a site for a monastery. He had accepted the gift, 
and planted there one of his colonies of saintly men, whose 
chants at evening song, at midnight, and at early dawn 
were wont for centuries to be borne over the waters, like 
voices from the angelic choirs, and the fragrance of whose 
unearthly self-denial was borne further all over the land 
than the perfumes of the citron groves of Salo and Maderno. 
It is still called the Isola dei Frati (the Friars' Island), 
though the new masters of modern Italy have driven out 
the sons of St. Francis, and the voice of matins or evening 
song no longer wakes the echoes of desolate island or shore. 
But the brown robes of the Franciscan monks, and the dis- 
tant sounds of holy psalmody over the clear blue waters of 
her native lake, were things as familiar to Angela Merici iu 
childhood or in girlhood, as the sights and sounds of her 
father's home. Her mother, moreover, had been brought up 
beneath the shadow of a church and convent of the Obser- 



of during Angela's last illness as being her " nephew,"— therefore, her sister's son. But 
it is the Biancosi that are said to be allied to the Count of Tracagno, Was not the 
*^ nephew" a cousin rather? 



32 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

vantines in her native town of Said', as we shall see further 
on. We need not, therefore, wonder to learn that both 
Giovanni Merici and his wife were ardent admirers of the 
heroic men and women, who, in all ages, had been the 
devoted followers of Christ and His Blessed Mother. Hence 
the custom which these excellent people observed in their 
household, of reading daily a portion of some edifying book, 
particularly the Lives of the Saints. Both parents must have 
taken uncommon pains to develop deep religious principles 
and generous sentiments of piety in the souls of their children 
from the first dawn of reason. That this labor of love should 
have been most assiduously performed by the mother, es- 
pecially in a family blessed with a father so truly enlightened 
as John Merici, we are prepared to expect. But the bi- 
ographers of our Saint dwell with such peculiar emphasis on 
the great share he had in forming her mind and heart, as well 
as those of his other children, that one is at a loss to account for 
it otherwise than by admitting that he was singularly careful 



J The Franciscans, or " Order of Friars Minor," in England " Gray FriaJS," comprised 
during the lifetime of the holy founder (1182-1226), three distinct, though not independ- 
ent, orders;— the order proper of Friars Minor or Minorites (1208); the " Order of Poor 
Ladies," or ''of St. Clare" (1212), known in the English speaking world as "Poor Clares;" 
and the Third Order, or " Order of Penitents," (1221), for persons of both sexes living 
in the world. The rigorous enforcement of the rule of poverty established by the 
Seraphic Saint of Assisi, was bitterly and obstinately opposed by the man next in 
authority to himself, Brother Elias of Cortona, whom Francis had made his vicar- 
general. The strife between this man, his followers in the order, and those who 
would not admit of any mitigation of the rule, saddened the last years of the meek 
and gentle Saint. After his death, it led to a lamentable strife, renewed with in- 
creased violence each time a new superior-general was to be elected, — till, in 1517, 
Pope Leo X. sanctioned the division of the Minorites into two independent 
societies, bestowing the name of Observaniines on those who clung to the observance 
of the primitive rule of the poor St. Francis, and the denomination of Conventuals on 
those who clung to a mitigated rule,— the title of Minister-General of the whole Order 
of Friars Minor remaining with the head of the Observantines, as well as the quality 
of lawful successor of St. Francis.— Happy had it been for the Church that religious 
orders had preserved the pristine spirit of religious fervor and holy poverty which dis- 
tinguished their beginnings! 



AJS'D THE UBSULINES, 33 

to train his dear ones to a full knowledge of the beauty of 
holiness, and to inflame their souls with a holy desire to 
emulate the unearthly goodness of the Saints. His love and 
piety must, therefore, have been above those of most fathers. 

He appears to have made it a rule to have all his children, 
the youngest as well as the oldest, around him each evening 
when he performed his family devotions, and prefaced them 
by the pious reading alluded to. Parents are only doing God's 
dearest work, when they are thus sowing the tender souls of 
their young children with the seeds of supernatural truth, 
and the early love of Himself and His Saints. And He aids 
them mightily in the doing. We remember how Anna, the 
mother of the great and saintly Samuel, prevailed over God 
by prayer, and so taught her boy by word and example, that, 
when brought to the Temple and given up to its service, 
while yet little more than a nursling, the child Samuel 
already found his delight in conversing with God. He had been 
taught how near to us is that most loving and most sweet 
Presence, how near to our eyes the veiled Countenance, an(J 
how near to our lips the Heart, in which all-sufficient loveisj 
ever planning our welfare. Even in childhood Samuel was 
favored with the direct communications of the Divine Will^^ 
— and all through his long and eventful life he never ceased 
to be the man of prayer, crying to the Lord for hours 
together in favor of his erring people and that people's 
faithless ruler. 

Everything told us of the childhood and girlhood of 
Angela Merici forces us to believe, that the same gracioua 
Voice which had made itself so familiar to the little Samuel^ 
was also wont to speak to her heart in these wondrously gentU 
but powerful tones. He is Creator, and best knows, dwell, 
ing as He. does in the very centre of our being, how to mo\d 
sweetly but irresistibly the springs of life within us, by 



34 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

the simple touch of His almighty hand, or by one word fronx 
His lips. And so, chosen as Angela was to be the parent of so 
wide-spread and great-souled a family, everything which 
reminded her of God or of God's most privileged friends 
and servants, attracted her attention powerfully even during 
these years of her precocious childhood. She would listen 
with a rapt look to the marvelously beautiful stories read 
to her from the most authentic sources, about Christ and His 
Mother, and the army of Saints who had shed such glory on her 
own native Italy, as well as on the other countries of 
Christendom. The knowledge of God and the things of God, 
enters as easily into the soul of innocent and holy childhood, 
as the light enters into the healthy eye. The one imprints 
indelibly on the understanding, the memory, and the imag- 
ination, the great truths of Religion, and the great facts 
embodying the lives of her apostles and martyrs, — just as 
the other conveys to the soul the sensible images of the 
beautiful world around us. 

There seemed to be in the angelic child's eagerness for 
religious instruction, and in the absorbed attention with which 
she listened to her parents' words, a something preternatural. 
They remarked it then, and so did others. But when these 
pious exercises were over, nature resumed its sway, and thd 
child was the child again, returning to her playmates and 
the amusements of her age with all the zest of childhood. 

She was a singularly beautiful child, fair-haired, with a 
brilliant complexion, a light and graceful figure, sweet-tem- 
pered and low-voiced, and gifted in an eminent degree with 
that loving nature, which is ever ready to sacrifice itself to 
the good and comfort of others; endowed, too, with uncom- 
mon penetration, and that precious faculty of self-control so 
inestimably precious to those who are to have the govern- 
ment of others. All these qualities of mind and heart shone 



AND THE URSULINES, 35 

forth in the child, and were developed in her by the sunny- 
atmosphere of her parents' home, as well as by the providen- 
tial circumstances in which she grew up to womanhood\ 

She was not a vain child, conscious of her personal attrac- 
tions, and seeking either the admiration or the notice of 
others. Even with all her childish ways and predilections, 
she was too seriously bent on imitating to the utmost of her 
power the heroic abnegation of the holy men and women of 
whose lives she heard so much, that it never entered her 
mind to seek to be admired, or praised, or petted, because of 
her beauty, her grace, or her wit. 

In her tenth year occurred an incident which reveals the 
strength of her character and the bent of her inclinations. 
Playing one day with girls of her own age, one of them 
caressing her beautiful hair, could not help saying, that this 
alone would be sure to bring her a crowd of admirers. The 
little maid, instead of taking this as a compliment, resented 
it as an insult. She had already resolved to belong to God 
alone, and to live as lived the Blessed Osanna Andreasi at 
Mantua, the Blessed Stef ana Quinzani at Soncino, St. Veronica 
at Milan, or St. Catherine at Genoa. The fame of these 
holy women, and of many others who were then living in 
Northern Italy, was the subject of daily comment on the 
shores of the Lake of Garda, thrilling the souls of the aged 
with regret for lost opportunities, and moving those of the 
young to ardent desires of emulation. 

Even the youngest, like Angela, who constantly heard 
these reports, or who, not unfrequently, were brought by 



1 Father Salvatori thus speaks of her in her tenth year: Giunta perb alV eta di died 
aiini diedi una piu luminosa riprova di questo parziale suo affetto. Quanta Hberale la 
grazia co' suoi doni, altrettanto le si mostrava la natura. Avvenente di volto, leggiadra 
di portamento^ e sopra tutto di una chioma cosi bionde e gentile, che nominata xeniva 
per un esemplare di rara hellezza. Ella perb niente invanita di guesto^ anzi neppur 
sospettando, che veruno a lei pensasse, xivexa a se ed alle sue divozimi. 



36 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

their parents to visit these great servants of God, — perfectly 
understood, that who would imitate their saintly examples, 
must not only put away all thoughts of vanity and self-in- 
dulgence, but lead a life of retirement, prayer, and self-cru- 
cifixion. This both Angela and her elder sister had laid to 
heart, even before the former had reached her tenth year. 
When, therefore, — for the first time, most likely, — the child 
was surprised and shocked at being praised for her come- 
liness, and told that her beautiful hair was sure to win her 
many admirers, her first thought was to cut off her hair. 
Then, as she could not do this without the consent of her 
mother, she bethought her of destroying its color by some 
horrid mixture. This she continued to use secretly, and even 
went so far as to apply the same mixture to her face in 
order to spoil her complexion. But this spirit and these 
tendencies became manifest in Angela even before her tenth 
year. The precocious intelligence which enabled her to un- 
derstand and enjoy intensely the reading of the Lives of the 
Saints while yet scarcely emerged from infancy, was accom- 
panied by a fervent desire to imitate them. Nor did her 
pious parents discountenance their child's purpose. On the 
contrary, they encouraged her love for prayer, the delight 
she took in spending a long time before the altar in the 
neighboring church, and her wish to perform certain acts 
of abstinence and self-denial in imitation of what they read 
to her or told her of the men and women revered as the 
highest models of goodness. 

Her sister, a few years older than herself, and one of her 
brothers, — probably the only surviving children of their 
family, — shared this fervent spirit of early generosity. In- 
deed, the sister, both on account of her age and her superior 
wisdom, became the little Angela's confidant, counsellor, 
pompanion, and guide in all the plans which she f prmed and 



AXD THE URSULINES. 37 

put into practice for her advancement in piety. Just, as in 
the next century, we see St. Teresa and her little brother 
playing at saints and hermits in their father's home in Avila, 
and even stealing away secretly to go to convert the Moors 
or receive at their hands the crown of martyrdom, even so, — 
though apparently in a more serious and rational manner, — 
our two little sisters at Desenzano, seized every opportun- 
ity to imitate the solitary life, the long vigils, prayers, and 
fasts of the Saints they read of. Angela would even steal 
out of her bed by night, when her sister was fast asleep, and 
kneel in prayer till her strength gave way. These practices 
and the little industries practised by the child to mortify her 
appetite for food, went so far as to affect her health percept- 
ibly. The watchful eye of her mother had no sooner 
detected this change in her appearance, than she divined 
the cause. So both parents agreed to check these childish 
excesses. 

Angela submitted, though sorely against her will, and not 
without being occasionally carried away by the powerful in- 
stincts which led her to seek every opportunity of self-denial 
and self -infliction. The older girl yielded more implicitly to the 
parental guidance. Nevertheless, John Merici and his wife 
were far too enlightened and conscientious to thwart their 
youngest daughter's disposition, when they perceived that the 
spirit which prompted her to follow the most perfect way, was 
truly the Spirit of God. They observed her carefully, then ; 
and once they became convinced that the hand of God was 
guiding their darling towards the sublime heights of holi- 
ness, — they bestowed their care in developing every quality of 
mind and heart which would fit her to be a perfect instru- 
ment of the Divine purpose in its own good time. 

And so in this blessed and happy home the three children 
grew up, as all children will where parents do their full duty 



38 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

lovingly; where the fear of God and the desire to please the 
Divine Majesty in all things, is the foremost law of life in 
the Christian home; where that home is blessed, if not with 
wealth, at least with abundance of all earthly comforts, where 
the family is held in universal esteem, and the beautiful and 
bountiful earth is in harmony with the peace and love and 
goodness that reign around the family hearth. 

Assuredly, the home of the Merici at Desenzano was sin- 
gularly privileged in all these respects. Nor was that of the 
Biancosi, near at hand in the far more beautiful town of 
Salo, less blessed by the bounty of nature or the gracious 
gifts of the Spirit. Indeed Salo, possessing as it did a 
church and monastery of the Observantines, enjoyed many 
religious advantages above Desenzano. And thus, it is not 
unlikely that Angela, as well as her brother and sister, were 
often induced by their piety as well as by their affection 
for their noble uncle and his family, to make the short 
journey between the two towns, — a journey which, even in 
our day, no one can make in Spring or Summer or Autumn, 
without fancying, as they skirt the magnificent lake, between 
groves of lemon-trees, or beneath a continuous canopy of 
overhanging vines, while the air is loaded with the most 
delicious perfumes and vocal with the songs of birds, — that 
the land they are in is almost an earthly paradise. 



CHAPTER III. 

Angela's first bitter trials. ' 

Favored of nature as we know this part of Italy to be, 
we know it to be still more privileged in the incomparable 
religious and intellectual advantages which it has enjoyed 
during so many centuries. And yet, — even in the time of 
John Merici, — a concourse of fatal circumstances had brought 
about, even in the bosom of the most pious families, such a 
neglect of the most life-giving sacraments as might be taken 
for a want of faith. We know that one of the chief aims of 
St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and their com- 
panions, while evangelizing Northern and Central Italy, from 
1537 to 1540, was to re-establish the practice of frequent 
confession and communion, which had declined in nearly 
every country of Christendom. The entire fifteenth century, 
as well as the fourteenth, had been filled by continual wars, 
as well as by religious disturbances. The great schism in the 
Church, known as the Western Schism, had only terminated 
in November, 1417, by the election of Pope Martin V., and 
the resignation of the other claimant to the title. But the 
political passions which had induced the European sover- 
eigns and statesmen to create the schism and to perpetuate 
it, as well as the worldly spirit which their joint efforts had 

sought for centuries to introduce into the government of 

39 



40 ^T. ANGELA MERIGl 

the Church itself, continued to be active forces of evil long 
after 1417. 

War after war, like billows on a storm-lashed coast, — 
swept over Italy, over its northern and central provinces in 
particular, so that scarcely a single generation knew "vvhat 
peace, repose, or security meant. And, in these times, war 
implied spoliation, pitiless destruction, the oppression and 
harrowing of the weak and defenceless, the blotting out in a 
single season of all the fairest fruits of religion, piety, 
culture, and civilization produced by the labor of ages. 

We all know that nothing can grow on the shore unceasingly- 
beaten by the ocean surge, and that no harvest will ripen on 
the field continually torn by the plow and the harrow, or daily 
ravaged by the wild herds of the forest, or desolated again 
and again by earthquake, fire, and storm. So is it with the 
home-life of any people, even the most civilized, and the 
most religious: its deepest beliefs are torn up by the roots, 
or weakened by religious division, strife and scandal; its 
most hallowed customs and cherished virtues are omitted, 
or forgotten, and cease to be a necessary source of strength 
or consolation, when the political or social whirlwind is. 
abroad, and when there is no rest to the earth from 
evil. 

When we are told, therefore, that Angela Merici was in 
her thirteenth year, and had not yet made her first Commun- 
ion, we are tempted to question the faith or the piety of 
her parents. And yet they were both unquestionably pious 
and faithful in no ordinary degree. The subsequent years of 
her life were to be a calamitous period for her native land 
and religion. She, — the angelic maiden of Desenzano, — and 
many such as she, were destined to be the chosen instru- 
ments of renovation. The very hunger and thirst her young 
soul had to endure in its long yeai'ning for the divine Euchar- 



AND THE URSULINES, 41 

istic food, were to help her afterward to provide for others 
the means of more frequent refection. 

At any rate, while the girl was yearning for the great 
happiness of receiving the Lord of her soul in His divinest 
gift, an accidental inquiry of the rector of her parish in- 
formed him of the fact that she had not till then been num- 
bered among his communicants. Her extraordinary virtue 
was, of course, well known to him, unless, indeed, that he 
was one recently appointed to the pastoral office, and was 
therefore inspired to repair the neglect of others. He fixed 
a day for Angela's happiness; and happiness it surely was 
for her, such as she had not known or conceived of before. 

The Eucharistic Sacrifice is to the Christian world a per- 
petual reminder of what Infinite Love could do to save the 
soul and win the heart of man. The Eucharistic Banquet 
accompanying that Sacrifice is the pledge and foretaste of 
the eternal fruition which that incomparable Love purchased 
for its own. On the very day when He rose from the grave, 
we see how intent He is on imparting to every one of the dis- 
ciples who clung to Him, though with never so uncertain a 
faith, the sweet consolation of His presence. Two of them are 
traveling toward the hamlet of Emmaus, near Jerusalem, 
where their residence was, or where they received hospitality 
during the Paschal festivities. He suddenly joins them on 
the road, instructs them on the truth of His resurrection, 
and opens the eyes of their soul that they may see the truth 
clearly. Then they arrive at their destination, and, as it is 
growing late, press their unknown instructor to tarry 
with them for the night. He accedes in part to their request, 
and takes His seat at their table, blesses and breaks the 
bread set before them, and gives it to them, — as He had 
done to the Twelve on the eve of His passion. " And their 
eyes were opened and they knew Him: and He vanished out 



42 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

of their sight. And they said one to the other, Was not 
our heart burning within us whilst He spoke in the way, 
and opened to us the Scriptures ?" ^ 

He never ceases to come to us '^ in the way," as we journey 
toward eternity amid the doubts, the uncertainties, the 
weariness, the manifold dangers and difficulties of our road 
here below. His grace it is that " opens" and makes plain 
to us the whole plan of divine love and mercy as revealed 
in the Scriptures. They are full of Him, and He takes away 
the veil that we may see Him clearly, fulfilling in His own 
person all the gracious offices of Redeemer. But it is in the 
Eucharistic banquet that He comes to us to apply, literally, 
to our souls all the merits, all the saving and sanctifying 
efficacy of His passion, by bestowing on us, in that Bread, 
Himself. The true Elisaeus not only restores us to life by 
the touch of His pierced hands and feet, but is ever near to 
us " in the way," to bless and break and give that Bread, and 
to warm our hearts with the divine virtue that issues from 
His own, as the light and warmth pour forth from the un- 
clouded noonday sun. 

Blessed are the pure of heart! To them is it given to say, 
— while that Sacramental Presence lasts, ^^Was not our 
heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way ?" 

Even so was it with the angelic maiden of Desenzano. 
What words the Divine Guest spoke to that soul, it were 
needless to inquire. He has said: "I am come to cast fire 
on the earth, and what will I, but that it be kindled ?" ^ 
Angela Merici was to kindle that sacred flame in many a 
soul. Her own, therefore, was to be a furnace of living fire. 
Indeed such is the rule of our God's supernatural providence. 
For it is not solely, or even principally, of the spirits whom 



1 St. Luke xxiv., 31, 32. 2 gt. Luke xii. 49. 



AND THE UB8ULINE8, 43 

He appoints to guard mankind, and to minister to their wants, 
that it has been said: ^' Who makest Thy angels spirits, and 
Thy ministers a burning fire."^ This applies much more to 
the saintly men and women whom the Divine Majesty selects 
and employs to enlighten and inflame the souls of a blind 
and cold-hearted generation. We know from the unanim- 
ous testimony of all who beheld Angela at that period, that 
her fervor of spirit was increased to an incredible degree by 
her first Communion. 

Thenceforward her chief delight for many a year was to 
remain in prayer in the Church, kneeling before the Mercy 
Seat, and conversing sweetly with the Veiled Majesty ever 
present there. A time was to come, — when a still far greater 
delight to her should be to set other souls aflame with the 
divine fire which burned within her own, and which was fed 
continually by her loving familiarity with that adorable 
Presence. 

Meanwhile, the girl of thirteen, wise as she was, spotless 
as she was, and devoted to her admirable parents and the 
performance of all her home-duties, was to grow still further 
in all maidenly virtue and spiritual loveliness beneath the 
eyes of these parents. 

We should be greatly in error, were we to imagine that 
the home of the Merici was an austere and joyless home, or 
that any one of their children was either condemned or 
allowed to lead therein the life of a recluse. The briditest 
and most joyous abodes are those of truly Christian parents, 
whose souls are lifted and lighted up by the consciousness of 
the divme friendship. There are mothers who make it one 
of their chief cares to make the cup of delight they daily 
prepare for their children as deep and full as they can, pre- 

1 Ps. ciii. 4. 



44 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

cisely because the happiness they enjoy with their dear ones 
is most innocent, and because they are careful to keep away 
from these guileless souls even the remotest thought of evil 
in their home amusements and pleasures. 

It is because the biographers of St. Angela have all agreed 
in representing her parents as both blessed with abundant 
means and remarkable for their enlightened piety, while all 
their children are described as true children of God, — that 
we are justified in believing that the interior of their home was 
ever as sunny as the aspect of nature around it. To pre- 
serve childhood and youth from the least stain of sin, it is 
necessary, first of all, to cultivate in the soul the love of all 
that is good and beautiful, for His dear sake, who has made 
this world so bright only to remind His children of the 
Eternal Home; and next, to preserve these innocent souls not 
only from the contact of evil, but from all knowledge and 
all thought of it. 

While perusing some of the published Lives of the Saint, 
one would be led, wrongly, we believe, to think that Angela, 
not only when budding into woiuanhood, but during the 
tender years of her childhood, had a full knowledge of moral 
evil, and was surrounded by companions of her own age who 
were not unacquainted with evil. The most angelic souls 
known to us among the Saints, — such as an Aloysius Gonzaga, 
a Stanislaus Kostka, a Berchmans, a Rose of Lima, or a 
Marianna de Paredes, were enamored from childhood of a 
life of retirement, prayer, and self -crucifixion, although 
utterly unacquainted Avith moral evil. Tho very thought 
of sin would fill them with fear and horror ; but that did 
not arise from either a practical knowledge of it, or any 
mental conception of its nature that could leave a foul im- 
pression on the fancy. These angels of earth woiild recoil 
from the thought of anything sinful, as one would from the 



AND THE UBSULINES. 45 

touch of a red-hot iron. But this instinctive horror in the 
soul is one of the fruits produced by the abiding presence 
therein of the Holy Spirit. When it is, therefore, said of St. 
Angela, that she made an early vow to consecrate herself to 
God alone, and that she afflicted her tender body by fasting 
and other austerities, we must not think of her as doing so to 
expiate sins that she had committed, or to preserve herself 
from the stain of a moral corruption of w^hich she had any 
notion. In the towns and hamlets of Northern Italy in the 
fifteenth century, as well as in those of Spain, or indeed of any 
other country in Christendom, young people of both sexes grew 
up beneath a watchful mother's care as unconscious of moral 
wrong, as ignorant of the existence of evil in their neighbor- 
hood, as is the child unborn. Nay, we know it to be so in 
the very midst of the nineteenth century, in the midst of 
the great Babylon of the New World, with all the multiplied 
means of information produced by our modern cravings for 
knowledge of every kind. God owes it to Himself and to 
us, that, while the world around us is solely occupied in 
gratifying sensuality, and ministering to the most unhallowed 
passions and appetites, the Christian home should be still a 
nursery of virgin souls, from which His angels are careful 
to ward off every evil influence. 

So our little maiden, after the great event of her first 
Communion was seen to advance rapidly in self-control, and 
in these habits of devotion to the needs and comforts of 
others, which are the very source of all peace and happiness 
in home-life, as well as the most essential requisite of com- 
munity-life in Religious houses. 

John Merici was now approaching his fortieth year. He 
must have been a most happy husband and parent. Indeed 
all Dcsenzano and its neighborhood esteemed both parents 
most blessed in the two angelic girls and the modest and 



46 ST, ANGELA MERICI, 

manly boy who vied with each other in serving God gener 
ously, and in honoring father and mother The restraint 
which the parents had formerly imposed on the pious fervor 
of their little girls, had been removed as these grevi^ up and 
gave proof of ripe wisdom and solid piety. So, just as the 
proud father had delighted to read to his little flock, in 
their childhood, the history of the most heroic souls, even so 
did he now pride himself in being their associate in their 
every pious practice and act of charity. 

We are in the year 1489. Angela was now fifteen, her 
sister being, probably^ some two or three years older. They 
were at this time the companions of thoir mother^ repaying 
her in a thousand ways for all her loving care of them. 
Their sincere and well-tried piety, — indeed the neighbors 
gave it a higher name, — dispensed her from the anxious 
watchfulness so needful at this age. Both girls seemed 
bent on seeking heavenly bridals; and if the position of 
their parents, their own beauty and rare qualities, did ever 
bring suitors for their hand, no mention is made of the fact 
in authentic history. Nor is it said that their parents sought 
any establishment for them. It may be that the report had 
gone abroad, — one warranted by the Christian customs of 
Ibese ages, — that both Angela and her sister had "chosen 
he better part," and vowed themselves to the Virginal Life 
bu much honored in the Church, and so fruitful in heroic 
sanctity and charity. Be that as it may, in that year began 
for Angela a series of extraordinary trials, which were to 
search cruelly every depth of her heart, to chasten her soul 
for the Divine purpose, and to loosen every tie that bound 
her to the dear home oi her parents. 

A malignant fever suddenly carried off her father, over- 
whelming his family with grief. To Angela, more even 
than to her brother and sister, this loss was irreparable. 



AND THE URSULINES. 47 

For her father seems to have taken especial care in training 
her, as if he had a presentiment of the glorious life-work for 
which she was destined. But with the forgetfulness of self 
which was so beautiful a feature in her character, the 
orphaned girl devoted herself to the task of consoling her re- 
maining parent. To a widowed mother's heart nothing is so 
sweet, in the first period of her bereavement, as the endear- 
ments and companionship of daughters of the age of Angela 
and her sister. And so both girls gave themselves up entirely 
to the sacred duty of sustaining and consoling their mother. 
Religion, speaking through such pure and loving hearts as 
theirs, must have had a double power to raise and cheer the 
poor mourner. From what we shall soon have to relate, 
however, it would appear, that, although resigned to the 
Divine Will in the loss of her husband, Signora Merici never 
rallied completely from the prostration caused by this unex- 
pected death. Where two souls are as thoroughly united by 
the exalted love which the Sacrament of Matrimony bestows 
on the smless and the deserving, the death of either only 
causes the other left behind to yearn unceasingly for the day 
of eternal reunion. And so the Christian mother, with her 
love and her hopes fixed on that eternal world where there 
would be no separation, endeavored to fulfill both a mother's 
and a father's place in the desolate home. We are not told how 
old her son was at this time, or how far she could rely upon him 
to attend to the care of their property. That he was entirely 
worthy of his parents and sisters, we shall see presently. 
Perhaps he was the youngest of his family, and thus the least 
able to relieve the widow of her load of care. 

She was to be soon still further tried. Angela, after the 
death of her excellent father, looked up to her sister for the 
counsel and guidance she had ever found in him. It was not 
a rare thing in those times, — filled as monasteries were with 



48 ST, ANGELA MERIGl 

the daughters of the wealthiest and most noble, — for girls who 
felt themselves called to the Virginal Life to remain at home, 
bound only by such vows as members of the Third Order of 
St. Francis or St. Dominic were allowed to make, discharging 
most perfectly all the duties of their place in the family, and 
distinguished only by their devotion to the suffering poor 
and their avoidance of all worldly pleasures and .amusements. 
Frequently also in families, especially of the rank held by 
the Merici and Biancosi, the parents themselves belonged to 
the Third Order, and united heart and soul with their 
daughters in the fervent though quiet pursuit of spiritual 
perfection. We have, indeed, no proof that either John 
Merici or his wife had bound themselves by any such religious 
obligations as these. Yet it is apparent from the details left 
by their youngest daughter's biographers, that they en- 
couraged their children, as these advanced towards woman- 
hood, to make of their home so much of a cloister as the 
performance of all neighborly charities and the fulfillmejit 
of their own home-duties permitted. 

Angela and her sister, in this their first sorrow, would 
naturally be united and more fervent than ever in the pur- 
suit of the great purpose of their lives, ^the attainment of 
holiness. Their beloved parent had gone before them to the 
Judgment Seat; and their own deepest faith and most hal- 
lowed affections impelled them frequently to kneel in spirit 
at the feet of the Judge and implore Him to give speedy 
rest to the father who had labored so much for them. Of 
course, a Christian mother and wife, such as Merici's loved 
companion, would find her sweetest consolation in joining 
her daughters, — all her three children, rather, — in these sup- 
plications. We have only to remember the words left on 
record by one of the greatest Saints of Northern Italy, some 
thousand years before their day, to understand how the 



AND THE URSULINES. 49 

Catholic heart follows its dead with tenderest solicitude into 
the awful regions of the eternal world unseen. St Ambrose 
thus speaks of the soul of Theodosius the Great, to whom he 
had been so wise, so stern, so loving a guide: 

" Give rest to Thy servant Theodosius, that rest which 
Thou hast prepared for Thy Saints. Let his soul return to 
[Thee] whence it came': where it cannot feel the sting of death, 
and where he shall know that death itself is not the end of 
our natural existence, but of our sinfulness. Him have I 
loved, and him shall I follow to * the land of the living;' nor 
will I forsake him, till my tears and prayers shall place him 
where his merits call him, within ' the holy mountain of the 
Lord;' — where there is life without end, where there is neither 
decay nor contagion, nor wailing, nor sorrow, nor companion- 
ship with the sepulchre; — but the true land of the living, 
where ' this mortal (body) must put on immortality, and this 
corruptible must put on incorruption.'" ^ 

A disciple of St. Ambrose, and greater even than his 
master, St. Augustine, thus speaks of his own mother, St. 
Monica, who had also been a devout listener at the feet of 
the holy Archbishop of Milan: 

" I then, O my praise and my life. Thou God of my heart, 
putting aside for a little her good deeds, for which I joyfully 
give thanks to Thee, do now beseech Thee for the sins of my 
mother. Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our 
wounds. Who hung upon the tree, and Who, sitting at Thy 
right hand, ^maketh intercession for us.'*. . . To this sacra- 
ment of our ransom did Thy handmaid bind her soul by the 
bond of faith. Let none separate her from Thy protection!'"^ 

The death of their worshipped one, therefore, anly made 
mother and children enter in spirit, not into the gloom of 



1 St. Ambrose, De Obitu TJieodosii. 2 gt. Augustine, " Confessions," b. ix.; c. ii. 



50 ^^. ANGELA MEBICl 

the Valley of Death, but into the blissful presence of the 
Lord of Life, the merciful Father of men and angels, in 
His own bright and glorious City on high. We Catholics 
mourn not as do those for whom death is the end of all 
things. Our grief is tempered with holy joy at the thought 
of the eternal rest and the unfading crown, which our dear 
departed have already obtained; and if we mourn or pray, 
or beseech the intercession of others in favor of the dear 
one gone to judgment, it is only to obtain from the Divine 
Victim of Calvary a more speedy application of His cleansing 
blood to the precious soul. So our tears are not tears 
of unalloyed bitterness, nor our mourning unmixed with joy 
at the prospect faith opens to us of heavenly glory and 
repose. 

God, who knew what fresh trials were at hand for the 
mother and her orphans, thus drew them more powerfully 
and more closely to Himself. This sense of nearness to Him, 
given at certain seasons to the souls He loves best, is, in the 
judgment of the great masters of spiritual life, a warning to 
prepare for new crosses. The afflicted mother, who now 
leaned so much for support on her two angelic daughters, 
and who derived so much sweetness and strength from the 
devotional exercises they preformed in common, had no 
sooner begun to resume her former active share in the house- 
hold duties, than she was alarmed at seeing her oldest child 
sicken and pine. Her husband had been snatched away by 
a malignant fever. We are not told what was the nature of 
the disease which carried off the daughter. At any rate, 
within the year, the Angel of Death paid his second visit to 
the home of the Merici, bearing away with him this time 
Angela's twin soul. He had given no warning of his approach, 
not even allowing time for the administration of the last 
sacraments. Such a sudden visitation must have added 



AND THE URSULINES. • 51 

greatly to the grief both of Angela and her mother, had 
they not known how pure, unselfish, and devoted to all 
goodness was the young life thus cut short in its opening 
promise. To the poor mother, whose heart had, most 
probably, as we have seen already, been sorely tried by the 
death of two other children, and who had not yet recovered 
from the cruel blow inflicted by the loss of her husband, this 
last bereavement was overwhelming. Perfectly as she may 
have acquiesced in the inscrutable wisdom of the Father, her 
gentle and loving spirit sank beneath this additional load of 
suffering. Thenceforward she only continued to droop and 
waste away slowly till the end came for her also. 

Meanwhile Angela, on whom now devolved the care of the 
family and household, as well as the superintendence of her 
parents' property, gave proof of her heroic qualities of soul. 
She felt like one who had set foot on a difficult mountain 
road, and over which she must needs travel, but who is all of 
a sudden forsaken by guides and companions, and left alone 
in the night to pursue her journey amid pitfalls and precipices. 

At this critical period of her Jife is made manifest the 
maturity of all these womanly virtues which had been 
steadily growing and ripening in the maiden's soul among 
all the blissful peace and sunshine of her dear father's home. 
A hasty and superficial perusal of the story of her early life 
thus far, might impress one with the notion that Angela had 
been a little wayward as well as eccentric in her girlish 
piety, often seeking to satisfy her bent for long prayer and 
austerity at the expense of filial obedience. The child, for 
most readers, would thus wear a somewhat unamiable aspect. 
And yet she was, invariably, the loving, dutiful, unselfish, 
bright, and winsOme child, who seemed to draw from her 
frequent and familiar intercourse with God and the angelic 
world, only an increase of devotion to the need, the comfort, 



52 ' ST. ANGELA MERICl 

the pleasure, and the happiness of her idolized parents and 
her sister and brother. 

We have said "frequent and familiar intercourse;" for, in 
truth, the Spirit who guided that privileged soul, exercised 
on its movements a control which was, in a measure, beyond 
her will. Was it'not an imperious impulsion of the Spirit of 
grace that urged John the Baptist, while yet a child, to seek 
the solitudes between Juttah, his native place, and the Dead 
Sea? Was it not the same divine impulse which he obeyed 
in choosing for his clothing the rude camel-hair tunic, as worn 
by Elias and Elisaeus, and for his food the wild-honey and 
locusts which these desolate hilly regions supply? 

Both Giovanni Merici and his wife understood, after a very 
little while, that their fair-haired darling was under the spell 
of a Spirit who would be obeyed. The wise and prudent 
father no longer thwarted his child's determination; he was 
content to direct her in the divinely- appointed path, and to 
.share with her and his oldest daughter the "honey from the 
Rock," which they found in their devotional and penitential 
practices. 

And so Angela had grown steadily, silently, in supernatural 
holiness, from early childhood to her sixteenth year; setting 
her heart on the one great aim of all God-like lives, — the 
honor of being allowed, in God's good time, to consecrate 
herself solemnly to her one Love and Lord, Christ Crucified. 
In the soul of child, maiden, and woman, this one thought 
and hope was the mighty force which gave purpose and shape 
to her whole life. 

If there is in the unfolding of life so much of awful mystery, 
even in the instance of the oak on the hillside, advancing 
from the acorn to the tiny sapling, and from the sapling cling- 
ing to the sheltered corner of the crag to the mighty tree which 
has battled victoriously with the storms of centuries,— how 



AND THE URSULINE8. 53 

much more so is the growth of the saintly soul, God's master- 
piece in the moral world!' This development of the highest 
energy, this progression in the beauty of highest goodness, in 
the grandeur of self-conquest, self-sacrifice, and boundless 
devotion to the glory of the Divine Majesty and the dearest 
interests of imra'ortal souls, — is the special work attributed to 
the Holy Spirit. Man, even when most enlightened by Re- 
vealed Truth, can only note its outward manifestations, and 
thus describe its stages with more or less of hesitancy and ob- 
scurity. The secret of the oak's interior life, the mystery of 
God's working in the privileged souls of His Saints, remain 
for the world an unfathomable abyss. 

St. Catherine of Genoa has left us a most beautiful allegory, 
which might be called the story of her own soul's progress from 
the first struggles with victorious sensuality to her sublime 
transformation into the likeness of the Crucified God of 
charity. More beautiful still, and more instructive, are the 
writings of St. Teresa; but how few among the most learned 
and the most spiritual are privileged to understand aright 
this mystic theology, so full of awful depths and impenetrable 
obscurity? 

That Angela Merici had attained to an extraordinary degree 
of sanctity, even in her sixteenth year, is a fact for which we 
have good warrant in the acts of her. canonization, solemnly 
attested as these were by the most credible witnesses, and 
after the most searching investigation. 

The affliction caused her by the loss of her dear father, and 
the further grief arising from the death of her cherished 
sister, had, as we have seen, only made Angela increase in 
love and tenderness toward her mother. She had always 
been the angel of the household; every act and word of 
hers toward her dear ones, while crushed by these successive 
misfortunes, made them consider her as most truly an angel. 



54 ST, ANGELA MERICl, 

But the girl herself, while adoring the hand of God which 
thus chastened a family devoted to Him, was also made to 
know that every loved object taken away from her own 
clinging heart was an earthly tie removed, and a higher 
measure of liberty given to the soul. She could not divine 
as yet what work God would have her do. She only strove, 
with all the power of her soul, to make His will her own, and 
to render herself in every way worthy of His designs. 

A fortnight after the death of her sister, while her mother's 
desolation was yet at its height, and her own grief was keenest, 
an incident occurred — one mentioned in detail in the Bull of 
canonization. It was harvest-time, and Angela, as we have 
said, had not only to superintend the household concerns, but 
those as well of the farm belonging to her family. This was 
situated about a mile and a half from Desenzano. Just as 
noontide was at hand Angela had set out for the fields bearing 
with her a basket with some refreshments for her workmen. 
She went along, her whole soul wrapped up in the thought 
of the dear companion so lately and so suddenly snatched 
away from her side. The remembrance of her having been 
cut off without any of the consolations so coveted by Chris- 
tians at their last hour, was just then causing Angela the deep- 
est anguish, and she was lifting her heart and her eyes to 
Heaven in fervent prayer for the repose of that dear soul, when 
lo! a most glorious vision opened upon her sight. The fields, 
the citron-groves, the clustering vines, all disappeared, and 
she beheld, as if she stood at the opened gate of Heaven, a 
multitude of angels and angelic maidens surrounding one 
who was evidently their Queen. Among the virgin train, when 
her eyes could bear to look attentively, she soon discovered 
her lost sister. Filled with an exstatic joy and a sweetness 
that no words can express, Angela stood rooted to the earth, 
forgetting all else in the world but that supernal glory a 



AND THE URSULIKES, 55 

glimpse of which was afforded her, and that Blessed Mother 
to whose service she had given herself from infancy, and 
that sweet sister whose saintly life had been to her a per- 
petual exhortation to holiness. All at once she heard these 
words distinctly uttered from amid that shining throng: 
"Angela, only persevere in the path you are following, and 
you shall have a share with us in the glory you behold;" 
and then the vision disappeared. 

The constant tradition among the people of Desenzano 
places the scene of this apparition on the Macchetto road, 
quite near a farm-house known as Le Grezze, which had be- 
longed to the Merici for many generations, and which, at the 
beginning of this century, had become the property of the 
noble family Del Villio. There, Father Salvatori assures us, 
stood in his day a little chapel dedicated to St. Angela, and 
destined in all likelihood to perpetuate the memory of this 
miracle. 

Such extraordinary favors bestowed on God's chosen ser- 
vants, never excite in them a thought of self-love or self- 
complacency. They are only bestowed on the humble, 
impelling them to still greater humility, that is, to a higher 
degree of that greatness of soul which impels the Saints to 
undertake in the Divine Service things that appear impossible 
to worldly wisdom, things most repugnant to flesh and 
blood. A glimpse of the eternal glory, though only dimly 
discerned from afar, and a momentary vision of that Un, 
created Perfection, though but seen through some sensible 
veil, has sufficed to transport these great souls beyond them- 
selves, and to impart to them a boldness and a courage which 
nothing could appal. 

A cold mass of iron, naturally inert and lifeless, when 
placed within an electric coil will acquire the force of a 
mighty magnet; it will then attract and lift up other iron 



56 ^^. ANGELA MERICL 

masses, magnetizing them in its turn, and converting their 
newly acquired energies into unfailing sources of heat and 
light.^ What . extraordinary graces for her own soul's 
sanctification must not Angela have derived from this one 
brief vision of the blissful citizens of the heavenly Jerusa- 
lem? And what new power to electrify others with the 
love of heavenly things, and to raise them with herself above 
the attractions of earth and the pleasures of sense? These 
effects we shall see further on. There was one chief pur- 
pose which the Divine Goodness had in view by vouchsafing 
this favor to the devoted girl, — and that w^as to prepare her 
to bear the death of her mother. - 



1 Onr readers will be reminded that in the -wonderful discovery of the Electric 
Light, which is now going to supersede gas, — artificial magnets are the great generat- 
ing power, the great secret of economy as well, in this latest application of modem 
science to the wants of life. 



CHAPTER IV. 

UTTER DESOLATIO]^. 

The vision just described had for its immediate purpose 
not only to console Angela in her great sorrow, and to fortify 
her against another approaching bereavement, but also to 
dispose her mother to meet death with resignation and holy 
joy. IsTo doubt, though Angela was reticent about what she 
had beheld in speaking to all others, she would naturally 
communicate to her dear sorrowing parent the heavenly 
assurance just given her of her sister's most enviable lot. 
Nothing could so move and cheer the gentle sufferer, as this 
extraordinary favor bestowed on her remaining angel. It 
brought home to the heart of the widowed wife and mother 
the fact that her family was one most dear to God, and, 
therefore, marked with the seal of predestination, the seal of 
suffering. No Christian mother could have listened to the 
description of that glorified throng of mangels and saints sur- 
rounding the Mother of the Redeemer, or dwelt in spirit on 
the picture of her own child among the blessed train of vir- 
gins, without feeling something of the ecstatic joy which 
flooded the soul of Angela, or wishing to be reunited to her 
dear ones in the Land of the Living. 

One of the most trying incidents in the life of our Blessed 

Lady herself w^as, doubtless, the ascension of our Lord;-— to 

57 



58 ST. ANGELA MEBIGl 

see Him, her adored and only One, going up to the Eternal 
City of God, amid the exulting multitude of His delivered 
saints, — and to have to remain after Him on earth for many 
a long, weary year, — what a trial for the heart of such a 
Mother yearning for reunion with such a Son! To be sure, 
as our Second Eve had to watch over the infancy of the 
Church, and support it in its early and fearful struggle, just 
as she had nursed and reared Him whose mystic body the 
Church is, so she could but exult in the glorious exile 
thus appointed to her in the divine plan. Nevertheless, 
while accepting this mission which was to consummate her 
merit, our Blessed Mother's heart could not but follow with 
unutterable yearnings the ascending form of her Divine One, 
The beautiful picture sketched to her by Angela, of her lost 
darling clothed with immortality, and so near to Mary, once 
the Mother of Sorrows, now the Mother of Eternal Joys, of 
a necessity drew Signora Merici's desires heavenward. At 
any rate, not a very long time passed between the vision and 
the last illness and death of the good lady. It most probably 
occurred within the twelvemonth thereafter.^ 

If the sweet duties of daughterly love performed toward 
one's parents in a season of joy and peace, amid all the sun- 
shine of a happy home, are sure to be most acceptable to 
God and most meritorious in His sight, how much more so are 
the ministrations of a daughter's love toward a widowed 
mother, when borne down by grief, and dying in her dark- 
ened home, with only two orphans left her of all her little 
flock of loved ones I We cannot help admiring the wonderful 
way in which Providence was moulding the soul and charac- 
ter of Angela by this quick succession of the bitterest trials. 



1 Father Salvatori says: " A year had scarcely passed,— indeed, according to some 
v\Titers,— a year had not entirely passed since the death of the father and sister, wheii 
the mother also fell dangerously ill and died." 



AND THE URSULINES, 59 

God, in forming a saint destined to be the parent of a countless 
line of pious and motherly educators of youth, surely pur- 
posed to form her heart to all the dearest and holiest affec- 
tions. No one so needs a heart filled to overflowing with 
the deepest, purest, tenderest, and most unfailing motherly 
love as the Superior of one of these great schools which claim 
Angela Merici as foundress, protectress, and model. Even 
in a community of cloistered nuns, devoted to a purely con- 
templative life, the Superior's heart should always be a great 
motherly heart, with all its wealth of tenderness open to 
every member of her family of nuns. Communities of 
women, — nay, communities of men, as well, — ^should find in 
all who govern them not only the provident wisdom and 
watchfulness of a father, but the untiring and unfailing ten- 
derness of a mother. Much more need is there of these divine 
qualities in the " teaching orders," — when young people and 
tender children ought ever to find a father's love and a 
mother's tenderness in those who hold toward them a parent's 
place in the school-room and outside of it. 

And now we can understand why Angela should have been 
so sorely tried in every one of her home-affections, and have 
had to practise perfectly all the duties of daughter, sister, 
and mistress of a household, even. Every fibre of that 
great womanly nature was to be tried and perfected and 
hallowed, in order to fit her to be the mother of an immortal 
race of women consecrated to the divine work of education. 

It is, therefore, no imaginary picture that we form to our- 
selves, when we think of the holy maid of Desenzano proving 
to her sick and dying mother what she had been to her 
father and sister in their last extremity, the tenderest of 
nurses, the sweetest of comforters, a very angel of light amid 
the gathering shadows of death. 

No girl of seventeen who reads this page, and who is still 



60 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

blessed with the priceless treasure of a true mother's love,-- 
but will be moved with pity and admiration in recalling 
that death-bed scene in the home of the Merici at Desenzano: 
the widow beholding with the eye of faith the heavens 
opened above her, and her dear ones among the shining 
multitude beckoning her to join them; the two orphans 
kneeling by their expiring parent, — the angelic girl forget- 
ting all sense of grief and loss in her anxiety to fill the dying 
soul with the sentiments of ardent faith and hope and love,— 
unwilling to leave the spot for a moment, or bestow a 
thought on aught else till she has, in a manner, given up 
the precious spirit into the hands and heart of its Creator 
and Father. And then, when she knows she is motherless, 
opening her arms and her whole heart to her only remaining 
one, her brother, — who has now but her in the whole world. 

There was another present there, the noble and pious 
brother of the dying lady, Biancosi, from Salo. His was a 
heart that could sympathize to the utmost with the two or- 
phans. He was a perfect Christian, tenderly attached to his 
deceased sister and her husband, and one who thoroughly ap- 
preciated the supernatural beauty of his niece's soul. They 
had no sooner performed the last solemn duties to the dead, 
than this worthy man proposed to Angela and her brother 
to make his home at Salo their own, till such time as the 
latter would be able to take charge of his father's home and 
property at Desenzano. To this proposal Angela yielded a 
willing assent. Her old home was haunted hj such sad 
memories, that a change may have been absolutely needful 
even for her bodily health. Besides, her uncle, who was a 
man of wealth, position, influence, and ability, now held a 
father's place toward her. She, therefore, placed herself 
and her brother under his guardianship. 

We may pause a moment in our saddening narrative, to 



AND THE URSULINES. 61 

bestow a rapid glance on the locality and neighborhood, in 
which some six years of our Saint's life were to be passed. 
Salo, with its magnificent bay, is about fourteen miles to the 
north of Desenzano, the road to it lying partly along the 
lake, but mostly across a rolling country, every foot of which 
is devoted to agricultural purposes. Even the crannies of 
the rocks on the steep hillside which you pass, are filled with 
olive-trees, the intelligent and indefatigable labor of the 
Italian husbandman having enabled him to create in these 
apparently useless and inaccessible rocks little terraces most 
solidly constructed and covered with rich earth, in which 
he plants -his favorite tree, and shelters it from the 
keen winds descending from the Tyrolean Alps. Desenzano, 
with the neighboring towns of Gardone, Maderno, Toscolano, 
and Gargnano, present a most charming aspect from the 
deck of the steamer which daily coasts the glorious lake. 
Goethe thus writes of this portion of it : " The noble aspect of 
the water and of the adjacent shore of Brescia refreshed my 
very heart. . . No words can express the beauty of this 
richly inhabited spot." 

From Desenzano to Said, and for several leagues above it, 
the shores of the lake are fringed with lofty trellises, on which 
the grapevine hangs its rich clusters in autumn, and in 
springtide and summer are brilliant with roses of every hue. 
'* Scarlet geraniums," says Hare, ''cover the whole face of 
the houses, while large tufts of oleander wave their pink 
plumes near the water's edge." The whole country on this 
western shore, almost as far as the borders of Tyrol, besides 
its rich crops of corn, olives, and other valuable produce, 
seems to be covered with lemon and orange groves. They 
erect, with incalculable labor and a perseverance beyond all 
praise, gigantic terraces along the sides of hill and moun- 
tain, and there plant their lemon and orange trees, when all 



63 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

the space on the level has been filled up. It is wonderful to 
see with what intelligent industry they shield these precious 
trees from the inclemency of an Alpine winter. Massive 
pillars of brick are built up to the height of twenty feet from 
distance to distance along these terraces, as well as in the citron 
groves lower down, and on these strong beams are laid, with 
a covering that effectually protects the trees beneath in the 
coldest weather. These rows of huge white pillars, glistening 
in the sunshine amid the deep rich masses of the surround- 
ing verdure, arrest the traveller's attention, and form a most 
striking feature in the ever-varying panorama along these 
enchanted shores. 

Said, like the neighboring towns of Maderno and Cam- 
pione, nestles in these beautiful groves, — while standing like 
sentinels to guard the approach of her bay are a group of 
lovely islands, among which is the Isola del Frati, or " Friars' 
Island," mentioned above.^ In the beautiful town itself there 
was an establishment of Friars Minor, devoted to the rigid 
rule of their founder, and much beloved by the people far 
and near. So Angela would be sure to find among them one of 
these wise and far-seeing men of God, whose counsel is so need- 
ful to souls climbing the rugged paths of spiritual perfection. 
The Biancosi mansion was, besides, a spacious and a comfort- 
able one, as became the rank and wealth of its owner. 
Angela and her brother received a most warm welcome from 
their generous uncle's family, and the orphaned girl found 
herself perfectly free to devote herself to her devotional ex- 
ercises, at the same time that she found in her uncle and his 
household not only the comfort of true-hearted sympathy 
and friendship, but the still greater comfort of companion- 
ship in her pursuit of holiness of life. 

hi ■ - ■ 

1 Page 31. 



AND THE URSULINES. 63 

Among her cousins one only, Bartolommeo, is mentioned 
afterward as having been Angela's guardian and fellow-pil- 
grim on a memorable occasion. He was probably younger 
than herself, and fell, like her brother, under the spell of her 
grace, her magnetic presence, and her preternatural goodness. 
As to the latter, he had been, in the old home at Desenzano, 
his sisters pupil in more than one way; and, if others looked 
upon her with an admiring reverence, he worshiped her as 
the embodiment of all that was most perfect in woman. She 
was all in all to him, and profited by his unlimited trust and 
affection to shield his soul from evil, and to teach it the un- 
speakable sweetness of serving the King of kings. 

How long Angela was allowed to enjoy, in her new home 
at Said, the retirement, the freedom from observation, and 
the repose of spirit rendered so necessary by the ordeal 
through which she had just passed, we are not informed with 
any precision. We know that this season of repose was 
followed by one of cruel and protracted interior trials. Just as 
our most loving Father permits storms to purify the atmos- 
phere and cool the intolerable heat of summer, just as He 
makes the mountain-pine wax strong in the tempest, and 
allows the waters to overflow the earth in order to give fertil- 
ity to the fields; even so does He allow evil spirits to assail 
with doubt and temptation the souls of His dearest ones, 
that they may come forth from the trial more chastened, 
more heroic, more fitted to the mighty work which He has 
appointed for them. The most terrible part of holy Job's 
agony was not the loss of fortune, possessions, home, and 
children, nor even the fearful and most disgusting leprosy 
that made him an object of loathing to his servants, his 
friends, his own wife, but even to himself. The bitterest 
portion of his deep and bitter cup was to hear his wife and 
his dearest friends arraign not only his own innocence, but 



64 S^- ANGELA MERICl 

the goodness and justice of God, and to find involuntary 
shadows of doubt and diffidence arise to cloud his own soul, 
like hideous forms of darkness and despair that stand 
between the righteous soul and the bright sun 'of its life,— 
God's countenance. 

It is not unlikely that, with all her extraordinary gifts, 
being of a good family, most beautiful, and mistress of her 
own hand, she became an object of attraction to the world 
around her, and was eagerly sought for by the young of both 
sexes. In the very best Christian families, — and there are 
very many such, even in our own day and country, — children 
who are brought up to manhood and womanhood not only 
without having ever stained their baptismal garment, but 
utterly unconscious of the nature of sin, are by their very 
innocence and absolute purity of soul irresistibly attractive 
to those of their own age and disposition. 

That Angela, arrived at the age of seventeen and eighteen, 
should become even for the best and noblest youths of her 
native province of Brescia, an object of deep, ardent, and 
pure affection, was inevitable. It was natural, too, that her 
uncle and his family should have looked with favor on some 
at least of the most worthy and desirable suitors, and laid 
their proposals before his niece. To be sure, she had set 
her heart on other bridals, and had no thought of encourag- 
ing in her own heart, or in others, anything like earthly love, 
though never so exalted. 

Without, therefore, going out of our way to find a cause 
for the interior struggle which she had to endure in the first 
year of her stay at Said, we may account for it by these 
obvious circumstances, and put aside the suppositions and 
commentaries of some of her biographers. The first and 
highest purity is that of the soul, — the preservation of un- 
derstanding, and memory, and imagination from the very re- 



AND THE URSULINES. 65 

motest suggestion of evil. Parents, mothers particularly, 
know well how many such innocent souls there are ever in 
our midst, whose snowy whiteness has never been touched 
by the first thought of evil. This is God's fatherly provi- 
dence over Christian society. 

Looking at Angela and her dear brother's position with 
the eyes of worldly wisdom, one must feel convinced a 
speedy and honorable establishment was greatly to be de- 
sired for the sake of both. To a soul given wholly to other 
aspirations, this must have been repugnant. And yet God 
may have permitted this opportunity of a public and de- 
cided choice between a happy life in the world, and the 
virginal life to which she felt called, to have aroused a 
fierce struggle in her soul. 

A struggle there was, indeed, in which her will never 
wavered. She employed the means which the saints always 
have recourse to in such trials, protracted prayer, greater 
vigilance over her thoughts and senses, and the frequent 
use of abstinence and other austerities. That the nature of 
her temptation was such as we have indicated, is further 
proved by the fact of her having taken her brother into her 
confidence. The spiritual education of this precious soul 
had been one of her chief cares since they had come to 
live in Salo. As if some prophetic instinct had warned her 
that he, too, like his oldest sister, was to be cut off in the 
first flower of his youth, Angela hastened to develop in him 
all the beautiful virtues which render holy youth so lovely 
in sight of God and men. He proved an apt scholar under 
one whom he trusted so thoroughly, and worshipped with 
such a tender reverence. 

Salo with its citron groves, the Lake of Garda with its 
sublime scenery, her uncle's mansion with its comforts and its 
distractions, the visits of her friends and acquaintances, the 



66 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

attractions of the gay and pleasant social world around her,— 
all this was to the spiritual sense of the holy maiden full of 
secret and formidable danger. She conceived the notion of 
leading among the labyrinth of secluded valleys which 
radiate on every side around her native lake, a life of utter 
seclusion, such as had been led by the ancient hermits in Asia 
Minor, Palestine, and Egypt; such also as had been led by 
many of the most illustrious saints of her own Italy. This 
project was communicated to her brother; and he not only 
approved it, but declared he would be his darling sister's 
associate and protector in this pious undertaking. 

Both had often heard and read of the twin sister and 
brother, St. Scholastica and St. Benedict, the great parents of 
monastic life in Western Christendom. The sister, while 
yet a girl of tender age, had left the home of her patrician 
father, to live in solitude and poverty of all things. Her 
young brother, at the age of fourteen, frightened by the cor- 
ruption which he beheld around him, and fearing his own 
weakness to resist temptation, resolved to do what his sister 
had done, and buried himself for years among the wild and 
inaccessible crags of Subiaco. Later, when both Subiaco 
and Monte Cassino swarmed with the elite of the Christian 
youth of Rome, emulous of Benedict's heroic virtue, 
Scholastica, with her nuns, wished to be near her brother's 
voice, and to be governed by his rule. History has preserved 
the story of the imperishable friendship of these twin-souls, 
and of their holy rivalry in the divine service. To this 
brother and sister, as, indeed, to Angela and her brother, on 
the present occasion, could be well applied the words of St. 
Paulus of Xola, addressed to his wife, St. Theresia, when 
they had left their immense possessions, to retire into the 
desert and follow Christ in humility and poverty. 

" Come, my faithful companion, let us put on our armor 



AM) THE URSULmES. 67 

for this new warfare. O thou whom God hath given to sus- 
tain my weak courage, thy love and care must moderate 
my rashness, and comfort me when downcast. Let us be to 
each other a model of holiness of life. Be thou the guardian 
angel of thy protector, and thus pay me back my care of 
thee. Raise me up when I fall, and let me lighten thy load 
when it bears thee down. Let us have but one mind, and 
let one spirit sustain both our souls!"^ 

Within their own time a holy woman had transformed the 
mountain of Varese into a paradise of piety and holiness: 
could not they find in the neighborhood of the beautiful 
lake some unfrequented summit where they might sanctify 
themselves beneath the eye of God, and unknown to the 
world of wealth and fashion? Such was the thought and the 
purpose which took possession of them. And so, leaving 
their uncle's house in the greatest secrecy, and striking into 
the least frequented paths, they betook themselves toward 
the neighboring mountains. They were but little, if at all, 
acquainted with the country beyond Salo, and so must, per- 
force, often make inquiries, thus arousing the curiosity of the 
peasants they met with. 

The uncle had no soonermissed them than messengers were 
despatched in all directions, and the fugitives were brought 
back to Salo. Biancosi made no reproaches. He perfectly un- 
derstood the reasons which they alleged for their departure. 
Sincerely pious as he was, he did not dream of turning either 
of the two orphans away from the path toward which the 

1 Tu modo, fida comes, mecum isti accingere pugnae, 

Quam Deus infirmo prsebuit anxilinm. 
Sollicita elatum cohibe, solare dolentem; 

Exemplnm vitse simus nterqne pias. 
Gustos esto tui custodis, mutua redde; 

Erige labentem, surge levantis ope. 
Ut caro non eadem tantum, sed mens quoque nobis 

Una sit, atque duos spiritus unus alat. 



68 ^^. ANGELA MEBICl 

divine voice called them. But the age in which he lived, and 
the condition of the country, were far from being favorable 
to such designs as their hasty fervor had contemplated. 
Venice was at war with France, and French troops overran 
the Peninsula from the Alps to Sicily, while the Italian 
princes and republics were espousing, some the side of 
Charles VIII., and some that of Spain. A few years later, 
the entire province of Brescia was held by the French, and 
the beautiful city itself was ruthlessly burned by these law- 
less invaders. 

No — these were not the times when the mountain solitudes 
of the Alps or of the Appennines could be with impunity 
converted into a safe retreat for hermits, — especially those 
of Angela's tender years and sex. 

Biancosi gently told the shamefaced fugitives that his 
house should be a safe retreat for them, in which they might 
be perfectly free to seclude themselves as much as they 
pleased, and practise the virtues to which they aspired. 
Only, he said, they must pledge themselves not to commit a 
second time the rash act of withdrawing from his home in a 
way that would expose themselves to much danger, and 
himself and his family to unmerited suspicions. The prom- 
ise was readily given and most faithfully kept. 

Wherefore, resigning herself to what she considered to 
be the will of Providence, Angela made the best use of her 
present opportunities. For the time being Sal 6 and its 
neighborhood remained undisturbed by the approach of hos- 
tile armies; and amid the peace and security of their seclusion, 
both sister and brother advanced rapidly in the science of 
the saints. 

Indeed, as Salvatori assures us, so great was the admiration 
with which the people far and wide regarded the beautiful 
girl, so tried by sorrow, so angelic in life, so ready to devote 



AND THE URSULINES. 69 

her entire energy to the service of the needy or the suffering, 
that she was universally designated as " the Holy Maiden," 
or " the little Saint from Paradise." ^ Parents held her and her 
brother up to their children as models of that close union of 
hearts which should ever exist between persons so nearly 
related to each other. Indeed as Angela had been the model 
daughter, so was she now the model sister. She had suc- 
ceeded in making her dear one a model youth, adorned with 
all the natural and supernatural graces of the true Christian 
man. Was she proud of the accomplished brother, who 
looked up to her with such a grateful sense of dependence? 
Was there in the love which bound the two orphans together 
anything which seemed to Angela to savor too much of mere 
human affection? We know not. But at this very period, 
when both had arrived at the full flower of their blameless 
youth, death came to the door of the Biancosi mansion in 
Salo, just as he had repeatedly visited the Merici home at 
Desenzano, and Angela beheld her brother taken away from 
her, just as her parents and their other children had been so 
mysteriously snatched away. 

She was now all alone in the world. It w^as indeed true, 
that her cherished companion had died as he had lived, — 
like a true child of God, relinquishing earth and its hopes 
without a murmur, and solicitous only about the fatherless 
and motherless girl whom he left all alone to face the dreary 
way before her. This cost the dying youth a bitter pang. 
But she, who had been his sweet instructress and guide, 
would not have him think of her; God, their most loving. 
Father, would be her unfailing stay, and He and His blissful 



1 Menando dimque in mezzo al secolo una vita non pur da Religiosi, ma da Serafini- 
Bi resero Tammirazione di tutto il paese; ed Angela in ispecie non veniva piu comune, 
mente chiamata, che col glorioso soprannome di "Vergine di Cristo," e "Santa dei 
Paradise.'* 



70 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

eternity must fill the soul of her dear one in his last hour. 

Still, when all was ended, and he had been laid to his early 
rest, a feeling of utter desolation swe^Dt over the brave girl's 
wearied spirit. The transcendent merit of such great souls 
as Angela's, does not consist in being without or above these 
deep and holy natural sentiments which are harrowed by the 
successive loss of father, mother, brothers and sisters, and 
crushed at finding the home so full of dear faces and loved 
voices yesterday, all empty, silent, and dark to-day. Holy 
souls feel deeply, more deeply even than the imperfect, 
because they are less taken ujd with self, and that they look 
upon all these hallowed home affections as the creations of 
the loving hand of the Almighty Parent. 

But saintly and heroic souls are wont to see the Divine 
Will in all these afflictions which befall the best Christian, 
and desolate the most virtuous homes. Angela had long 
learned to see that Fatherly Hand in the special providence 
which ruled events in her own family. She had from child- 
hood practiced herself to *^walk before that Adorable Ma- 
jesty and therein find perfection." She found in this constant 
sense of nearness to Him, in the consciousness of His unfail- 
ing presence to her soul, her perfect happiness as well. There 
is so thin a partition-w^all between the Christian soul and that 
only real world, the unseen and eternal, in which live and 
reign and exult Christ and His saints. 

Doubtless Angela had related to her dying brother, as she 
had to their mother previously, the glorious vision sent to 
(Jheer and encourage them all, while still at Desenzano. She 
had been training him to set his young heart on that other 
life and that blissful world where her own holiest affections 
dwelt. And so he had died, with the light of eternal day 
dawning brightly on him. When he was gone, her spirit 
followed him. Her ^^conversation," — the daily and hourly 



AND THE URSULINE8, 71 

thoughts and aims and aspirations of her soul, — were "in 
Heaven;" God was now all in all to her. 

It is probable that her brother while living was able to 
superintend, together with his uncle Biancosi, the homestead 
and family estate at Desenzano. All this devolved, after his 
death, on Angela. She was then in her twenty-second year. 
Wherefore, after having enjoyed for six years the cordial 
hospitality of her uncle, and profited by his fatherly care and 
large-minded piety, to make wonderful progress in holiness, 
she resolved to return to the dear home in which she was 
born. The chief motive which induced her to take this step 
was that she had found, in a girl of her own age and rank, 
one fitted by her spotless life, rare piety, and ripe wisdom, 
to fill the place of her lost sister and companion. The 
design of both the one and the other appears to have been 
to lead in the retirement of Angela's home a life of spiritual 
perfection, — guided by such rules as the Bishop of Brescia 
might give them, and directed by some experienced priest 
among the local clergy. 

In all this there was One who was guiding Angela's soul 
in His own wonderful way, and preparing her, by all the 
experience thus acquired, to be the enlightened teacher of 
others, — the mother of a countless family. 



CHAPTER V. 

BACK IN THE OLD HOME. 

We need not dwell on the joy with which Angela's return 
was hailed not only by such of her kinsfolk as lived in 
Desenzano, but by the townspeople. Her presence in Salo 
had been esteemed a blessing by all classes alike; and her 
departure looked upon almost as a calamity. What projects 
Angela and her new companion may have entertained about 
their own future, have not been revealed to us. They lived, 
m their privacy, as if they w^ere bound by religious vows, 
and the sweet fragrance of their fervor increased daily, and 
with it the veneration of their fellow-citizens. Their se- 
clusion, however, not being a cloisteV, the poor, the sick, and 
the ignorant far and near soon learned to know and bless 
the two devoted ladies. 

Was this companionship deemed by Angela to be a com- 
pensation for the loss of all those who had once made that 
dear home so unspeakably happy for her? ... At any rate 
God soon put an end to it. As the dark shadow of this new 
affliction closed around her, the tried girl, had her soul not 
been taught to read the divine counsels in a supernatural 
light, might have been tempted to think that her love and 
trust seemed to blight and kill every one that was dear to 
her. 

72 



8T, ANGELA MERIGL 73 

The truth is, that the Divine Majesty will use for its holi- 
est and most merciful designs toward mankind only instru- 
ments which will become perfectly united with the Hand 
that works with them. Such close union manifestly supposes 
a detachment from all earthly affections. So, while we are 
perusing this first portion of the Life of St. Angela, we can 
admire how the Divine Workman prepares and fashions this 
chosen instrument of one of His most gracious purposes. It 
will thus become apparent why the inestimable favor of a 
saintly death removes from Angela's path every one of her 
best beloved, that so she might look up to God alone, and 
place her trust and her affections in the All-mighty and All- 
sufficient. This brings us to another wonderful incident in 
the career of the Holy Maid of Desenzano. 

The exemplary life led by herself and her late companion, 
the singular union in them of a most active and tender char- 
ity, and of a spirit which was utterly unworldly and self-sac- 
rificing without being repulsive in its austerity, had drawn 
to them the hearts of the young persons of their own sex in 
the town and neighborhood. Angela's heroic fortitude un- 
der misfortune, her beauty, her sympathetic address, — and 
that unseen but irresistible charm exercised by holiness on all 
who approach it, led these young girls to seek the home of 
the Merici. And Angela, who had as yet no settled plan 
about her own future, welcomed her old friends and play- 
mates with the winning grace that distinguished her manner 
toward others. She encouraged them to join her in 
many, of her devotional exercises, and deeds of beneficence, 
and shared as well in their innocent amusements and recrea- 
tions. It was a wise thing to go with them in their pleasant 
road as far as she could, in order the more safely to lead them 
into her own. About a month after the loss of her last dear 
companion, these good girls had planned a little excursion into 



74 ^T. ANGELA MEBICI, 

some one of the lovely sites around Desenzano, most proba- 
bly for the purpose of turning Angela's mind away from the 
sad thoughts which seemed to oppress her. They had stopped 
in a beautiful shady spot called Brudazzo, not far from 
the main road to Salo. Angela, whose soul was not so much 
affected by the death of her friend as perplexed by the un- 
certainties of her future, was making it a matter of contin- 
ual meditation how she must choose for herself in order to 
obey the Divine Will. Indeed, that will had not as yet 
declared itself to her. So far her effort had been to fol- 
low undeviatingly the light vouchsafed her, to refuse to the 
promptings of the Spirit of grace no sacrific which she 
thought He demanded of her. 

The sublime regions of holiness contained, she knew, 
fields of activity that lay wide apart, and heights above 
heights of varied and glorious excellence. The road over 
which the Spirit of God had led her so far, had been like the 
easy ascent from the populous plains of Lombardy up to the 
foot-hills of the Alps around her native lake. From the 
sunny vine-clad slopes on which she was about to kneel in 
prayer at Brudazzo, the acclivities just around Salo arose so 
steeply that they shut out all objects beyond. Yet she 
was well aware how many intermediate mountain masses 
stood between Monte San Bartolommeo and the snow-clad 
summits visible from her native town, — the crests nearest 
heaven, on which rested the last glories of the setting sun and 
the first illumined by his morning beams, — the cold and shin- 
ing ice slopes, accessible only to the daring and practised few. 
Was it not so with these arduous heights of sanctity, visible 
to the multitudes down below in the plain, approached and 
climbed only by those who surrendered their souls to the 
Spirit of God? 

Angela had left her companions to enjoy themselves be- 



AIW THE UBSULINES, 75 

neath the shade, and, retiring to. a remote corner of the 
vineyard, she knelt in prayer. She besought with tears the 
Divine Goodness to put an end to her perplexities, to show 
her the road which He would have her to follow, to enlighten 
her as to the means that she must choose to carry out His 
designs, and to grant her the strength to follow out the path 
of His will without faltering or turning aside. Her whole 
soul went up in this great heart-cr^ fof light and strength, 
and her tears flowed copiously. 

All at once she was dazzled by a flood of light, the 
heavens were opened above her, and from the bright portals 
on high a luminous ladder descended, resting on the earth. 
Down the steps came trooping a multitude of holy maidens 
clothed in flowing vestments and bearing, each, a royal 
crown. They approached her in beautiful array, chanting 
divinely the hymns of the Heavenly Jerusalem, while two 
shining ranks of angelic spirits formed an escort to them, 
swelling with their voices the chorus of song from the 
maiden-train. Angela, transported beyond herself by the 
sight of this heavenly multitude and these divine harmonies, 
was suddenly thrilled by the appearance of the dear com- 
panion so lately taken from her. "Angela," the well-known 
voice said, " know thou that our Lord hath sent thee this 
vision, to inform thee that before thy death thou shalt found 
in Brescia a society like this: such is His injunction to thee." 
And the shining procession reascended into Heaven.^ 

Here was a prompt answer to Angela's prayers, leaving her 
full of peace and courage. Her spiritual director, after list- 
ening to her account of this marvelous occurrence, declared 
that it could not be an illusion, and th!lt she was justified in 
accepting the injunction conveyed to her as a clear manifest- 
ation of the Divine will. That she knew on this occasion, 

> Salvatori, c. iii., p. 16. . 



76 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

and from circumstances not mentioned in the authentic rela- 
tion of this incident, her vocation to be the educator of her 
sex, is what we can gather from her own conduct. She forth- 
with began to prepare herself for the work of teaching, by 
seizing every opportunity offered her to gather children and 
young people around her. Indeed so well did she succeed in 
this, and so fruitful became her endeavors and those of such 
as volunteered to aid- her, that her fame as an instructress 
spread rapidly all over the province. 

Let us bear in mind that the year in which the divine pur- 
pose was revealed to Angela was that in which St. Francis 
Xavier was born, Ignatius de Loyola being then in his sixth 
year; it was also the very year that beheld Vasco da Gama 
sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, and discovering the 
East Indies; while on that same year, Christopher Columbus, 
returned from his second voyage to America, was contend- 
ing in Spain with opposition of every kind before starting on 
his third expedition to that Western World which he yearned 
to subject to the Cross. We who know what a glorious share 
Ignatius and Xavier, with their zealous progeny of apostolic 
men, were to have in evangelizing the two worlds thus laid 
open to the religion and civilization of Christendom, cannot 
forget that the daughters of St. Angela have shared with 
them on almost every field in both hemispheres, the apostle- 
ship of education. We must, therefore, plainly see the hand 
of God in the beginning of the great work inaugurated at 
Desenzano and Brescia, just as we recognize it in the con- 
Version and long preparation of Ignatius de Loyola for his 
appointed task. Before the end of this book, we shall see 
the societies founded by the Maid of Desenzano and the 
heroic Spanish soldier growing side by side in Italy, and 
thence extending their branches to other countries. 

This second vision sent to Angela so opportunely, filled her 



AND THE URSULINES, 77 

with extraordinary fervor. The increase of spiritual strength 
which she invariably derived from approaching the Table of 
the Lamb, caused her to desire to receive the divine Bread 
more frequently, nay, daily, — if she were only permitted to 
do so. This, however, was a privilege rarely, if ever, granted 
in that age, to secular persons. And her insatiable yearning 
for this "Daily Bread," led her to take one more step in the 
road toward monastic life. The Third Order of St. Francis 
numbered in the diocese of Brescia, as in every diocese of 
"Western Europe, many persons of both sexes and of every 
rank in society. Angela, while at Said, had entertained a 
wish to become a member of this Order, but was dissuaded 
from her purpose by her uncle Biancosi, who did not like to 
encourage in his orphaned niece, at so early an age, a design 
which he might have praised in his own daughter. 

It was in the Franciscan habit that she was buried, and in 
it that her body was found clothed when her grave was 
opened by order of the Congregation of Rites during the pro- 
ceedings for her beatification. Among the many holy women 
who claim as their spiritual parent the seraphic Monk of 
Monte Alvernia, few, if any, deserve more than Sister 
Angela Merici the gratitude of Christian homes; she may be 
justly called the seraph of Female Schools^ 



1 It may not be out of place to give you, dear reader, some of the reasons why St. 
Francis is called the " Seraphic," and why the same epithet has been given as a title to 
his order. Seraphs are among the angelic spirits who ever gaze upon the face of God, 
and become all aglow with the fire of His love, those who are considered to burn with 
the divinest flame. They have so superior a knowledge of Him and His abyssal per- 
fections, that they resemble Him most closely. As they know Him and love Him better 
than their fellows, so do they know and love in Him all created beings,— seeing His 
perfections mirrored in them, and conceiving even the irrational and inanimate creation 
to be instinct with the Creator's love and to send forth its voice evermore in His praise'. 

A writer well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and whose bitter anti-Catholic 
prejudices are equally well known,— thus speaks of the seraphic spirit of St. Francis: 

'* It was here (on Mount Alvernia) that St. Francis learned the tongues of the beasts 
and birds, and preached them sermons. Stretched for hours motionless on the bare 



78 ^^. ANGELA MERICl 

This act of receiving publicly the habit of the Third Order 
she considered to be her solemn betrothal to the God of her 
soul. She could not contain her exstatic joy on this occasion, 
nor prevent the sweet tears which would overflow from the 
pure depths of that virginal heart. Thenceforth she was 
Christ's,— she wholly belonged to Him and to the little ones 
of His flock. Thenceforward, deeming that she had as yet 
done nothing for her Lord and Love, she began to run for- 
ward in the road of sanctitj^, — in the practice of humility, 
self-sacrifice, and entire devotion to the good of others. 



rocks, colored like them, and rough like them in his brown peasant's serge, he prayed 
and meditated, saw the vision of Christ crucified, and planned his Order to regenerate 
a vicious age. So still he lay, so long, so like a stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind 
and low his voice, that the mice nibbled bread crumbs from his wallet, lizards ran over 
him, and larks sang to him in the air. Here, too, in these long solitary vigils, the 
Spirit of God came upon him, and the spirit of Nature was even as God's Spirit, and 
he sang:— 'Laudato sia Dio mio Signore. con tutte le creature, specialmente raesser 
la f rate sole; per suor luna, e per le stelle; per frate vento, e per I'aire e' nuvolo, e 
sereno, e ogni tempo/ Half the value of this hymn would be lost were we to forget 
how it was written, in what solitudes and mountains far from men, or to ticket it with 
some cold word like Pantheism. Pantheism it is not, but the acknowledgment of 
that brotherhood, beneath the love of God, by which the sun, moon and stars, and wind 
and air and cloud, and clearness and all weather and all creatures, are bound together, 
with the soul of man. Here is a sentence of the ' Imitation of Christ,' which throws 
some light upon the hymn of St. Francis by explaining the value of natural beauty for 
monks who spent their lives in studying death: -If thy heart were right, then would 
every creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. There is no 
creature so small and vile that does not show forth the goodness of God.' With this 
sentence bound about their foreheads, walked Fra Angelico (a Dominican) and St. 
Francis. To men like them the mountains, the valleys, and the skies, and all that they 
contained, were full of deep significance. . . The whole world was a pageant of God's 
glory, a poem to His goodness. Their chastened senses, pure hearts, and simple wills,, 
were as wings bji which they soared above the things of earth, and sent the music of 
their souls aloft with every other creature in the sjTnphony of praise. . . We, who have 
lost sight of the imisible world, who set our affections more on things of earth, fancy 
that because these monks despised the world, and did not write about its landscapes, 
therefore they were dead to its beauty."— Cor>iAi/^ Magazine^ vol. xiv. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE HOME IN DESENZAISTO CONTINUES TO BE SISTER ANGELA'S 

SCHOOL. 

As she now wore the religious habit, she was admitted to 
the privilege so ardently coveted of frequent Communion, 
Her happiness was so great that with the independence and 
privacy she enjoyed in her own home at Desenzano, as well 
as the continual opportunities she sought and obtained of 
teaching, instructing, and doing all manner of good to those 
around her, she might well believe that she was in God's 
hand, doing the good He wished her to do, and in the only 
sphere she could do it in for some time. 

Desenzano, Salo, and the surrounding districts long con- 
tinued to cherish a grateful memory of the years between 
1497 and 1516. For during this long period of preparation 
and expectancy did imperious circumstances force Angela 
Merici to remain beneath the shelter of the home in which 
she was born and reared. It was the peculiar feature of her 
beautiful life that it was to bloom and bear its fruit on the 
native soil, so that the eyes which had beheld it in its spring- 
tide, should watch its growth until its blessed maturity. 

And, as her grateful fellow-citizens ever gladly testified, 
most beautiful was that life, as well as most holy, most 
lovable appeared to all who approached her that saintliness 

79 



80 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

which shone forth in her bearing, her speech, her womanly 
gentleness and grace, and that exquisite tact which knew 
so well how to find the fitting words for each one's need, 
and to do the right thing at the happiest moment. Her life 
was one of retirement and prayer and secret austerity, but 
not one of seclusion, or of unamiable and unapproachable 
rigor. She had to remain in the world, attending to her 
own worldly concerns, dealing with men and women whose 
spirit was oppressed with material cares, and whose hearts 
were bruised and bleeding from the wrongs inflicted by the 
world: they came to her because she was unworldly, because 
she was heavenly-minded, because a healing virtue went 
forth from her, filling the very atmosphere of her home, and 
felt in the touch of her hand, the sound of her gentle voice, 
and the unearthly light that beamed from the pure depths of 
her eyes. 

The highest and the oldest sought her in their troubles 
and sorrows, young as she was, because there was a wisdom 
in her counsels and consolations that was not the slow growth 
of age; and many a man who had come to consult Sister 
Angela about his temporal concerns was moved to lay bare 
the wounds of his soul, and bore away with him a firm re- 
solve to live a little for eternity. Many a woman whose life 
had been wasted till the hour she crossed the threshold of 
the Merici, and crossed it too impelled by curiosity, went 
away changed in heart, after having looked upon the face of 
a living saint. 

As to the young people of her own sex, they were irresist- 
ibly drawn to Angela, all submitting to the charm of her 
manner and won by the kind and pleasant words which she 
knew so well how to say to each one, — though the few only 
among the most fervent had courage to imitate the extreme 
austerity of life revealed to her intimate friends. Still, as it 



AND THE URSULINE8. 81 

happened later in Brescia, so did it befall at Desenzano 
and, in a certain measure, at Salo, women of every class 
adopted both a more modest and a far less costly style of 
dress, — through the silent eloquence of Angela's example. 

There is no mention in authentic history of Angela's having 
opened a school during her stay at Desenzano, any more than 
during her long residence at Brescia. Nor was she, w^hile 
sheltered at her parents' home, the superior in any sense of a 
community of women. Indeed there was no such commu- 
nity in existence. Not before the year 1530, as we shall see 
in its place, was the saint able to lay the foundations of any- 
thing like a congregation, or even a community. 

Distracted by fierce civil dissensions as all Upper Italy was 
during the early part of the sixteenth century, with Lom. 
bardy and Venetia overrun again and again by the hostile 
armies of France and Spain; and most unfavorable as were 
the times not only for the peace of monastic life, but more 
especially still for the founding of new monastic orders, — 
Providence gave to Angela's aims and efforts a direction 
singularly in keeping with the needs and circumstances of 
her age. It was the complaint of men who would not re- 
form their own evil lives, that Religion sadly needed reform; 
the saying of priests and monks to whom the fulfillment of 
their own solemn obligations had become an intolerable bur- 
then, that Religious Orders were in a deplorable state of de- 
generacy, while many men in authority, influenced by these 
outcries, had openly set their face against the admission by 
the Church of any sort of new monastic institutions. 

It was, then, a special inspiration of Providence that led 
Angela Merici, even after this last vision, to remain in her 
own home while wearing the monastic habit, and honoring 
the Religious profession by a most saintly life. His spirit it 
was, assuredly, which made her counsel the maidens who 



82 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

were drawn to her, and strove to imitate her, to live in the 
world beneath the protection of the parental roof, — . 
presenting to the disordered and pleasure-seeking society 
around them the forcible argument of their blameless con- 
duct and active charities, Angela and her associates were 
to be everywhere along, the most frequented paths of daily 
life in town and country, like so many guides stationed, 
whose very angelic mien and unearthly virtues, were to pro- 
claim to the passing crowd that Heaven was to be won by 
violence and that Christian men and women were born to some- 
thing beside the present life's bodily wants, or pleasures, or 
vanities. Their mission was to leaven the masses in the great 
cities, especially with the living faith and the heroic piety 
springing from it, so sorely needed by the times. 

This view of their immediate providential purpose, — for on 
the foundations laid by Angela was to be erected after her 
death the glorious superstructure dimly foreshown to her, 
but never beheld by the living saint, — will enable us to 
Understand her long preparatory labors and trials. 

If Angela did not open a school for children in her home 
at Desenzano, it is none the less certain that she was most 
zealous in procuring their being taught the elements of the 
Christian doctrine, first of all, and then, so far as she might, 
the first elements of secular knowledge. Books were very 
rare and very dear in those days, — i^rinting being as yet but 
in its infancy, — and the cost of procuring either manuscripts 
or printed works was entirely above the means of the lower 
classes. This dearth of books, however, was to be remedied 
to a very great extent before the end of the sixteenth cent- 
ury, and with the enormously increased facilities for learn- 
ing and for teaching afforded by the printing-press, the zeal 
of the Institute of St. Angela in promoting education was 
to keep a constant j^ace. 



AND THE URSULINE8, 83 

All this, and much more than this, should be kept m mind 
when comparing our age and country with the Italy of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. People who are resolved 
to find fault and condemn blindly, will shut their eyes to 
the wrong and injustice of such comparisons and the sweep- 
ing censures pronounced by fanaticism or prejudice. 

Meanwhile, although the home of the Mericiat Desenzano 
was converted neither into a convent nor into a school of 
secular learning, it continued to be none the less a daily 
resort for learners in the far higher knowledge of the things 
of God. As we have stated above, the highest as well as 
the lowliest in the land were impelled by the needs of their 
own soul, much more than by a laudable curiosity, to look 
upon the face of a living saint, to feel themselves lifted up 
toward God by the near presence of the angelie maiden, or 
to receive from her the rules for the amendment and di- 
rection of their lives in conformity with the spirit of the 
Gospel. 

One noble family, in particular, formed during this period 
a warm and generous attachment for Angela, which was to 
influence her after-life in no ordinary degree. These were 
the Patengoli of Brescia. Jerome and Caterina Patengoli 
had a country-seat at Patengo, a hamlet not far from Desen- 
zano, and there they were wont to spend some months every 
year. They had watched the growth of Angela's reputation, 
and, feeling a lively interest in one so tried by misfortune 
and so universally revered, they made of their stay at 
Patengo an opportunity for cultivating a nearer acquaint- 
ance. All that they saw and heard themselves of her untir- 
ing charity and zeal among her townsfolk, ceased to excite 
their wonder when they were admitted to her privacy, and 
privileged to witness the absolute poverty in which she 
chose to live, her rigorous abstinence, and her insatiable 



84 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

thirst for prayer. What, however, convinced them most of 
her sanctity, was not only the unhesitating promptness with 
which she tore herself away either from her rapt contempla- 
tion before the altar, or from her private devotions at home, 
to be at the beck of all who needed her, or called upon her, 
but the beautiful cheerfulness with which she met, at all 
times and in every place, the persons who thus intruded 
upon her occupations. 

From the sweetest joys of her converse with the Divine 
Majesty, she was ever ready to pass to the presence of the 
poorest stranger. She worshiped Christ in the persons of 
His poor, she beheld God in the souls of all His children, and 
found no difficulty in forsaking the sweets of spiritual com- 
munion with Him on the Altar or in her oratory for the still 
sweeter occupation of ministering to Him in the persons of 
the bodily or spiritually needy. Her incredible austerities 
did not apparently impair her strength; most certainly they 
did not sour her temper; while the hours spent alone with 
God only made her more radiant toward all those who came 
to interrupt her. 

All this the Patengoli saw with increasing admiration, 
year after year, with an increasing desire also to have such 
a treasure with them or near them in the beautiful, busy, and 
populous Brescia. They had prevailed on Angela to spend 
a few days with them at Patengo, and the intimacy spring- 
ing from this visit so filled them with veneration for their 
visitor, that they resolved to try every possible means to 
have her in Brescia. Their desire was to have its fulfillment 
later, and in a way which they as well as their happy children 
little dreamed of then. 

As the name of Brescia is so closely interwoven with the 
events of our heroine's history, as to cause her to be desig- 
nated sometimes as "Angela of Brescia," it naay be well to 



AND THE URSULINES, 85 

know something of the city in which were laid the foundations 
of the Order of St. Ursula, and which was for twenty-four 
years the h6me of its foundress. 

It is situated among the spurs of the Venetian Alps, about 
fifteen miles to the northwest of Desenzano, in a position 
which commands a magnificent prospect, ranging over the 
upper hilly region of Lombardy, as well as the glorious plain 
below, the garden of Europe, and destined by God to be the 
blissful abode of peace and plenty and religion. Brescia, — 
the Roman Brixia, — was famous, powerful, and prosperous 
at the beginning of the Christian era, and looked up to as 
the parent of such neighboring cities as Verona. At the 
birth of Angela it was the capital of one of the most beautiful 
provinces of the Venetian Republic, distinguished not only 
for the highly cultivated country which surrounded it, but 
for its iron works, its manufactories of arms, and its love of 
the fine arts. 

In 1512 it fell into the hands of the French, who made 
themselves so odious to the inhabitants that they rose like 
one man, attempted in vain to storm the citadel in which 
there was a French garrison, tore down the Fleur-de-Lys, 
and hung out from the battlements the standard of St. 
Mark. Thereupon Gaston de Foix returned with 12,000 
men, the flower of the French army, and demanded the in- 
stant and unconditional submission of the city, threatening 
that unless it surrendered the population should be pitilessly 
exterminated. The citizens, thus placed between the com- 
bined attacks of the garrison from within and such a 
superior force from without, preferred the issue of combat. 
They were overcome, and De Foix, — of whose chivalry we 
have read such exaggerated accounts, — carried out his in- 
human threat. Bayard, who was wounded in the assault, 
tells us in his memoirs that 22,000 persons of every age and 



86 >S^. ANGELA MEBICl 

sex were butchered by the victorious soldiery! * It was not 
to be expected that Desenzano and Salo would be quite free 
from the intrusion and exactions of these hordes, as much to 
be dreaded as the Mohammedan fleets and armies which 
threatened the Mediterranean sea-coast. Still no mention is 
made by any of the historians of Angela of these terrible 
events. 

Not only were such massacres perpetrated by Christians 
on their fellow-Christians, but the city itself was fired in 
every part, and for many days pillage, murder, and licentious- 
ness reigned without control. 

Brescia never recovered either her former population, or 
her wealth, or her industrial activity. She remained beneath 
the yoke of the foreigner till 1616, — when, as we shall see 
presently, Angela was induced to take up her abode there. 

It is only after remembering calamities like this, falling 
with such crushing force upon her native land and its people, 
that one sees how utterly hopeless it must seem to the de- 
voted girl, as well as to her most enlightened and energetic 
counsellors, to found anything like a religious order^ — or 
even to lead, amid the successive invasions of a foreign 
army, a life of undisturbed religious aeclusion. 

While their beautiful city was beginning to rise from its 
ashes, and men's souls were despairing of ever again bmdmg 
up or healing permanently the cruel wounds inflicted by the un- 
christian generals of the Most Christian King, Jerome and 
Caterina Patengoli, saw, within the sp'ace of a few months, 
both of their promising children taken from them by death, — 
the victims, most likely, of the terrible fevers or fatal en- 

1 Bayard's account of this memorable assault is, of course, as favorable as possible 
to the beseigers. Other wTiters, perhaps not very much inclined to favor the French, 
give a much higher figure. According to these 7,000 of the defenders were slain in the 
heat of battle, and 46,000 of both sexes and of every age and condition were ruthlessly 
slain. 



AND THE URSULINE8, 87 

demies that follow in the track of war, and break out with 
such fearful violence within a fortified city, the gutters of 
whose streets, for several days, ran with the blood of fifty 
thousand slain! The year 1516 gave peace to Brescia, 
and the French flag disappeared from her walls. But there 
was utter desolation in the home of the Patengoli. 

The afliicted parents would fain have Angela with them, 
knowing as they did that she would be a comforting angel- 
Nor were her presence and ministrations needed by them 
alone. There was not a family within the walls of Brescia 
who did not then mourn the loss of their dearest and best, as 
well as the utter ruin of their fortunes. So, if Angela wished to 
reap a rich harvest of charity and devotion, no time was 
more propitious than the present condition of Brescia; no 
more favorable opportunity could she ever have of endearing 
herself to a people who were already suflJciently acquainted 
with the fame of her blameless life. 

The Patengoli did not address themselves directly to 
Angela. They were convinced she would do nothing without 
the orders of her Franciscan Superiors at Lonato. There- 
fore not a moment was lost in obtaining from these a posi- 
tive command to Angela to proceed to Brescia and take up 
her residence with Jerome Patengoli. She obeyed without a 
moment's hesitation, and proved to be all that her friends 
and the entire city expected, — an angel of God in their 
midst. Many and unceasing as were the demands upon her 
time and strength, she was equal to all. Her whole soul 
went out to the multitude of her afilicted fellow-citizens and 
countrymen. 

It was also the first time that she had lived in a populous 
city ; and, in Brescia, much as the houses of private citizens had 
suffered even where the fire had not swept away everything, 
the churches and religious institutions had escaped with com- 



88 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

paratively slight injury. The beautiful churches, — beauti- 
ful especially in their numerous works of Christian art, 
were to Angela a source of perpetual delight. There every- 
thing in the sacred edifice spoke to her soul. The monuments 
recalling the devoted lives and heroic death of the saints 
who had made Brescia illustrious among Christians, or who 
had been honored by the special veneration of the citizens; 
the works of painting and sculpture which kept alive before 
the mind and heart of the people, the glorious history of the 
great men and women who had died bearing witness to the 
divinity of the Christian faith, or had honored it with deeds 
of supernatural sanctity or had been the apostles of the 
truth to the surrounding countries; — all these made a deep 
impression on a soul so open to all the sublimest impulses and 
inspirations of grace. So, once she had consoled the 
Patengoli, she gave herself up to the numerous works 
of charity which awaited her on every side. When not in 
the hospitals, or visiting the sick poor, or preparing for 
death some poor needy soul, she was sure to be found 
before some favorite shrine or altar in the Cathedral or St. 
Afra, rapt in prayer, and lost to all sense of what was pass- 
ing around her. It sufficed, however, to say one word to 
her about some urgent errand of mercy or neighborly kind- 
ness, to see her rise from her knees, and set out with face all 
aglow with the divine fire within to perform what was asked 
of her. 

At length her friends, as she thought, needed her presence 
no longer; Brescia was also busy in repairing the evils 
of war and foreign occupation. What had been spared by 
the enemy of the largest fortunes was, it was thought, barely 
sufficient to meet the wants of the owners, the requirements 
of reviving industry, and the assistance needed by the im- 
poverished condition of local institutions. No one thought 



AND THE URSULINES, 89 

or could reasonably think of creating new ones amid the ruin 
and bankruptcy of the present. 

Angela, therefore, deeming these conjunctures most un- 
favorable to her cherished design, was about to return to 
Desenzano, when Providence interfered, and enabled her to 
prolong her stay in Brescia. 

Among the many distinguished persons whose veneration 
she had won in that city was a wealthy merchant named 
Antonio dei Romani, who insisted on Angela's remaining in 
the present field of labor, offering her in his own spacious 
mansion a room remote from all noise and interference, 
and securing, besides, the authorization of her Franciscan 
Superiors. This did away with every objection which 
Angela could have toward prolonging her stay in Brescia. 
Indeed it was her own wish to continue there her fruitful 
labors among all classes, especially among the young peo- 
ple of her own sex, very many of whom were in the habit of 
coming to her for spiritual instruction and comfort. And 
thus, although she fancied, in her extreme diffidence of her 
own powers and influence, that there was no near prospect 
of her establishing such a congregation as the last vision 
foreshadowed, — she nevertheless felt instinctively that she 
was meanwhile doing a preparatory work by continuing her 
present labors. 

In these tentative efforts the years passed slowly by, 
much to Angela's disappointment. Her soul was full of 
what she could not help considering to be her life-work^ 
the one thing which the Divine Majesty had set apart for 
her to accomplish. It had been her wish, soon after the 
prophetic vision at Brudazzo, to consult the Blessed Osanna 
Andreasi, then near the close of her saintly career in 
Mantua. Such a holy personage, with the supernatural 
lights vouchsafed her, could reassure the inexperienced girl 



90 ST. ANGELA MERICl, 

on the reality of her vision, and best counsel her concerning 
the best means for carrying it out. 

What Angela could not do before 1505, — the date of 
Osanna's death, — she resolved to do in 1522, when she had 
permanently fixed her abode in Brescia. She went to 
Mantua, to pray at the shrine of this great servant of 
God, — ^^hoping that the intercession of a saint in Heaven 
would procure for her the light she had so often yearned to 
get from her lips while living. Several of the Brescian 
ladies, who looked up to Angela as their guide, resolved to 
accompany her; and they all set out under the protection of 
the good Antonio dei Romani. Angela could scarcely tear 
herself away from the tomb of the Blessed Osanna. After 
spending a long time in prayer before it, says Salvatori, 
*^she threw both her arms round the tomb-stone, kissing it 
again and again with the tenderest devotion, shedding sweet 
tears of joy, and filling all present with the like devout 
sentiments." On her return she passed by Solferino, 
where Prince Luigi de Gonzaga, lord of Castiglione, and a 
near relative of Federigo Gonzaga, the reigning sovereign of 
Mantua, happened to be then residing with his wife.^ Both 
Luigi and his wife had heard much of Angeb, and were 
anxious to make the personal acquaintance of one whose 
reputation was so widespread. They were both solidly 
pious; and their desire was not prompted by mere curiosity. 
Nor was Angela's visit one dictated by mere courtesy or 

1 This Luigi (Latin, Aloysiies), was grandfather to St. Aloysius Gonzaga, who was 
named after him. Solferino is quite near the little town of Castiglione, where the saint 
was born. Both to^vns are situated in a hilly but richly cultivated country, Solferino, — 
now a straggling hamlet with ruins of the Castle of the Gonzagas,— crowning a bold 
eminence, about ten miles south of Desenzano. The terrible battl-e of Solferino was 
fought on June 24, 1859, between the Austrians on the one side, and the allied French 
and Piedmontese, on the other. The Piedmontese army extended its lines almost 
to Desenzano, the fiercest struggle taking place near Kivaltella, on the -very shores of 
the Lake of Garda. 



AND THE UBSULINES. 91 

any other worldly motive. She had a mission of charity to 
perform. One of her own kinsmen, and a subject of the 
Gonzagas, had incurred the penalty of banishment and for- 
feiture of all liis possessions, by some treasonable act. The 
audience which she solicited was granted at once; and after 
presenting her petition for mercy, and conversing for a con- 
siderable time with both sovereigns, she was sent on her 
way rejoicing. These visits were so designed by Providence 
as to secure Angela and her Congregation powerful friends 
in the day of need. 

The day of action, so long wished and prayed for by the 
humble pilgrim was to be deferred for some ten years more. 
Even while Angela and her companions were on their w^ay 
homeward to Brescia, the war clouds which had so often 
within the generation then living deluged Upper Italy with 
blood, were gathering once more above the Alps. The con- 
test between Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V., which 
had already been so disastrous to Italy, was to continue for 
five years more to ruin all the best interests of Religion and 
society, — till, in 1527, all Christendom was to be startled by 
seeing a French renegade with an army of heretics and 
cut-throats under the imperial banner of Spain, besiege 
Rome, sack and plunder it during two entire months, and 
hold Pope Clement VII. a prisoner in Castle Santangelo! 

The Gonzagas, all through these heart-sickening wars, had 
been pre-eminent in patriotism and military skill. 

Their aim, — like that of every Pontiff who ascended the 
papal throne, was to rid Italy of foreign domination. Un- 
fortunately both France and Spain claimed as their heir- 
looms the Kingdom of Naples at tlfe south of the Peninsula and 
the Duchy of Milan, at the north. Between these two great 
powers all the Italian princes divided their allegiance, often 
changing sides as suited their own selfish policy, or as the 



92 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

victory happened to declare for King or for Emperor. The 
reigning sovereign of Mantua in 1522 was Frederic (Federigo), 
who helped to drive the French under Bonnivet back across 
the Alps in 1524, and was for that and other heroic services 
created Duke of Mantua in 1530. His father, Gian- Francesco 
(John-Francis), was one of Italy's greatest captains, and 
again and again worsted the armies of the French Kings, 
Charles VIII. and Louis XII. 

Can we wonder that this beautiful country, — like a har- 
vest-field devastated year after year in the season of the 
ripening grain, — should have borne no fruit or comfort to the 
husbandman? Or that Angela Merici, though burdened with 
the divine injunction to found a religious order, should have 
deferred, as each year dawned upon her with its terrors and 
uncertainties, the fulfillment of her cherished purpose, till at 
length her soul grew sick with the interminable and unavoid- 
able delays? 

Such indeed were the dark prospects of all Upper Italy 
when she re-entered the gates of Brescia in the year of grace 
1522. This city, as well as Verona, had been under the 
Venetian rule since 1516. It had been the last dream of 
Pope Leo X. before his death (December 1, 1821), to unite 
the Italian princes in a solid league, so as to expel both the 
French and the Spaniards from the Peninsula. He there- 
fore joined hands with the Emperor Charles V. to drive out 
the French from Upper Italy, purposing afterward to force 
the Spaniards to relinquish their hold on Naples and Sicily. 
Venice came, in this struggle, to the support of France, 
and exposed her own territory to be overrun by the Span- 
ish and German troops, as* it happened after the expulsion 
of the French. Through the whole of 1522, therefore, 
Brescia and its territory were either held by the Spanish forces 
or subject to be overrun by their victorious bands. The next 



AND THE UBSULINES. 93 

year, indeed, Venice gave up the French for the Spanish al- 
liance. But in 1523 Francis I. had a splendid army of 
30,000 men in Upper Italy, and another sanguinary struggle 
began on the same field so often laid waste during these sad 
years, and around the same beleaguered cities for whose 
citizens there seemed no prospect of lasting peace or solid 
prosperity. 

To one of Angela Merici's heroic and self-sacrificing tem- 
per, there was abundant opportunity for the display of her 
characteristic virtues in a city like Brescia. Still while thus 
reaping a rich harvest of merit and gratitude before God and 
men, her forty-sixth year had come and gone, and she saw not 
when she might begin the great work enjoined on her and 
to be consummated in this same city of Brescia. 

Just then she felt impelled to visit Palestine, not only for 
the purpose of reverently treading in the foot-prints of the 
Master on the land privileged to behold Him in the flesh, but 
to obtain from Him, on the spot where He had shed His blood 
for mankind, the grace of seeing clearly what His will was with 
regard to her appointed life-work, and how she was to ac- 
complish it. Her own Venice was still the mistress of the 
Adriatic; nor had the Mohammedan as yet overthrown her 
supremacy on the Mediterranean. Though sadly fallen away 
from her pristine power and her pristine piety, — for Angela 
while yet in her early womanhood beheld all Europe in 
arms against Venice, to the shame of the Christian name, — 
the grand old Republic still prided herself on protecting on 
sea or land all who felt inspired to visit Jerusalem and the 
other holy places. Yearly, in the beginning of May, one of 
her noblest ships, commanded by a Venetian senator, was 
placed at the disposal of the pilgrims of every nationality. 
And in that which was to sail in the spring of 1524, Angela 
resolved, if possible, to take passage to Palestine. 



CHAPTER VIL 

LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 

Religious Orders to be long-lived and fruitful in holiness 
must be Christ-like in their members. Hence it is that we 
find the great men and women, who have been instrumental 
in founding these Orders carried beyond themselves by a 
passionate love for the Crucified and for His Cross. Their 
humility lay not only in the practice of the most extreme 
poverty, but in the endurance of the most abject humilia- 
tions and the bitterest bodily pains, in order to bear a closer 
resemblance to their Divine Model. Convinced that in the 
Cross of Christ lay the virtue by which the proud and sen- 
sual and selfish world around them could be lifted above 
earth, could be saved and sanctified, they sought in all 
things to be like Him, — destitute of all earthly comfort and 
goods, despised and held as most vile, nailed with Him to 
the bitter wood of shame, and treated like the worst of out- 
casts and criminals. 

We know that during the years 1523 and 1524 Angela 

practiced a poverty and an habitual self -crucifixion, the bare 

thought of which would appal our cowardly delicacy. There 

happened to pass through Venetia in the summer of the 

former year, and while Angela was on her way to Mantua, a 

noble Spanish soldier, on his way to the Holy Land, whose 

94 



8T, ANGELA MERICl. 95 

Christ-like poverty, humility, and sanctity of life, left a 
heavenly odor behind it wherever he passed. 

He too had been chosen to found a mighty religious soci- 
ety, and his soul, like that of the Maid of Desenzano, — was 
tried by seemingly inexplicable delays, and prepared by won- 
derful experiences. From Genoa, w^here he landed first on 
the shores of Italy, he traveled on foot to Rome, braving 
the dangers and outrages to be met with in a country cov- 
ered with hostile armies and afflicted with the plague. In 
Rome he astonished and edified all who beheld him, — al- 
though they knew not how highly born was the poor way- 
worn mendicant on whom they bestowed their alms, while 
admiring the preternatural light that shone through his pal- 
lid and noble features. Back through Central Italy he pain- 
fully dragged himself dividing among the poor the gold 
given him to pay his way to Palestine, begging his bread 
from door to door, arriving in Venice, utterly exhausted and 
unknown, and, after worshiping the God of his soul in the 
glorious temple dedicated to St. Mark, sinking to sleep on 
the pavement outside, beneath the shadow of some of the 
porticoes around the magnificent square. 

In his splendid palace, near at hand, Senator Marco Trev- 
isan, illustrious alike for his descent, his learning, and his 
piety, — one destined later (1553) to fill the highest office in 
the Republic, — is warned in his sleep to seek and care for 
the houseless pilgrim. From Jerusalem, where Ignatius de 
Loyola would have fain dwelt forever, feeding near the 
Sepulchre of Christ the fire which burned within his heart, — 
he is forced to return, his hope unfulfilled, and the yearnings 
of his great love unsatisfied in all save in the cruel sufferings 
he had to endure. In January, 1524, he lands at Venice and 
knocks at the gate of the Trevisan palace, clad in '^ a short 
thin coat and an open vest of black cloth, very ragged at the 



96 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

shoulders, with pantaloons of some coarse material, that 
reached no lower than the knees, leaving his legs quite bare. 
His sufferings had been great, for the cold was extreme, and 
there were frequent falls of snow." ^ 

Had Angela heard of the passage of this noble pilgrim 
through Venice and Upper Italy both in the preceding 
summer, and during the winter months of 1524? We have 
no grounds for affirming it positively. Nevertheless, it is 
anything but unlikely that the name and fame of the heroic 
Spaniard should have reached Mantua and Brescia. What 
happened during her own pilgrimage was noised far and 
near, as we shall presently see. And the saintly virtues of 
Ignatius Loyola produced a no less profound impression. 

Be that as it may, — the Love of the Crucified drew to 
Jerusalem both these great souls. To all Christians, in- 
deed, ever since the birth of Christendom, Jerusalem be- 
came of all places the dearest and most sacred. It was for 
all who truly loved the Redeemer, as it is still, — the home of 
the soul. 

Bartolommeo Biancosi, one of Angela's cousins from 
Salo, had also longed to visit Jerusalem. 

Happening to visit her in Brescia about this time, he be- 
came acquainted with her project and asked to be her com- 
panion on this pilgrimage. He was young, however, and 
had never traveled, and was but ill-fitted to be the guide 
and protector of his cousin during so long a voyage, and 
amid the serious dangers to be met with on sea and land. 
From this perplexity they were both relieved by Antonio 
dei Romani, who offered to be himself their guide to Pales- 
tine and back. To make sure of there being no delay to 
their setting out in the spring of 1524, Romani went him- 



iStewart Rose, *' Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits," p. 64; 2d ed., London, 1871. 



AND THE UBSULINE8. 97 

self beforehand to Venice, and found the flag displayed, 
which the Republic every year hung out as a signal for the 
Pilgrims. So he sent word to Angela to lose no time in 
joining him at Venice. 

Angela forthwith, on the 1st of May, repaired to Said; and 
both she and Bartolommeo set out on horseback for Venice. 
They arrived m that city on the 25th, after having en- 
countered more than one mortal peril. On the 25th, which 
happened that year to be the Feast of Corpus Christi,they 
all partook early of the Divine Bread vouchsafed to pilgrims 
here below, and embarked on the vessel set apart for the 
yearly pilgrimage, under the command of the Venetian 
Senator Luigi Giustiniani. 

It fared well with our pilgrims during the whole of their 
voyage down the Adriatic, and until their arrival at the port 
of Canea,in the Isle of Crete (or Candia), when without any 
previous warning or indisposition, Angela was suddenly 
stricken with total blindness. Thereupon both Romani and 
Biancosi bethought them seriously of returning to Venice, 
taking it as an indication of the Divine Will that their dear 
companion was thus disabled from seeing the Holy Places, 
and the direct object of their journey was frustrated. Not so 
Angela : she could, indeed, she saia, well believe that this 
sudden affliction had befallen her in punishment of her sins. 
Still, although unworthy of seeing with her own eyes the 
places where her adored Lord had labored and suffered for 
her sake, she would only prove to Him both her gratitude 
and reverence by touching them with her hands and her 
lips. 

Her friends were too manly and too Christian, not to be 
moved by such reasons as these. So, without further objec- 
tion, they pursued their voyage all together, Angela's cheer- 
fulness and courage under this sudden visitation only serving 



98 ST. ANGELA MERIGl 

to increase still more the veneration in which she was held 
by them, and by the entire ship's company. 

She was received with much honor by the Franciscan 
Monks in Jerusalem, to whom had been intrusted the 
guardianship of the Holy Places, and the duty of providing 
for stranger pilgrims arriving in the city. She wore her 
Franciscan habit; and the testimony of her fellow-travelers, 
her own gentle and saintly bearing, as well as her present 
helplessness, rendered. her an object of ten-fold respect and 
sympathy to the devoted monks. ^ She found hospitality 
with her Sister Nuns of the Third Order of St. Francis on 
Mount Sion. 

Angela was more fortunate than had been Ignatius Loyola, 
who was not allowed to visit any of the Holy Places outside 
of Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem itself was treated with 
unaccountable harshness both by the Turks and by his fellow- 
Christians. He was compensated for the blows received and 
for his peremptory dismissal from Palestine, by a vision in 
which he beheld our Lord Himself, and which filled him 
with unspeakable joy. 

Unspeakable also was the consolation experienced by 
Angela, as they led her by the hand from place to place. 
What happy concourse of circumstances enabled her fel- 
low-pilgrims and herself to visit Bethlehem, has not been 
told by her historians. She deemed it an unspeakable privi- 
lege to be permitted to kneel and adore the Incarnate 
Word on the very spot where He first blessed His Virgin- 



1 There exists a formal testimony to the veneration with which Angela was regarded 
in Palestine, from Father John di Calorra, a Franciscan of the strict observance. In 
his ^' Chronological History of the Province of Syria and of the Holy Land of Jeru- 
salem," {Storia OrorioCogica ddla Promnda di Siina e Terra Santa di Qerusalemme^ 
Venice, 1694, book v. ch. 27,— he goes on to say: "At that same time another servant 
of God shed a great lustre in Jerusalem on the Monastery of the Nuns of the Third 
Order situated on Mount Sion; her name was St. Angela of Desenzano." 



AND THE UR8ULINE8. 99 

Mother with the joys of maternity. Angela, guided as she 
assuredly was by the Spirit of God, could contempJate with 
the eyes of her soul the scene of that nativity, as it had 
occurred so many centuries before: the Mother and her Babe 
and their devoted guardian, Joseph, cast out at the mid- 
night hour from the homes and hearts of their kinsfolk; the 
Messiah born in a wayside cavern, laid after His birth 
in the poor, cold crib; that Mother and her companion, — • 
the first companions and followers of the King of souls, — 
kneeling in rapturous adoration of this infinite self-abasement, 
divining, though dimly, the mighty mysteries of the career 
began in the Manger only to end on the Cross of shame. What 
mattered it that Angela had to be led by the hand, like a child 
in infancy, as she approached Bethlehem, climbed its hillside 
road, and entered the church constructed by early Christian 
piety above the cavern in which the Light of the World first 
shone from the crib upon the eyes of his Mother? Hers 
was a soul long habituated to the loving practice of the 
poverty, the self-abasement, and self-sacrificing chanty 
taught by the Babe of Bethlehem. From her childhood Angela 
had been in spirit and truth the faithful companion of Mary 
and Joseph in that glorious path which leads to Calvary. 
And here she was on the very soil which their feet had 
trodden. Here they had knelt by the crib, the two first 
worshipers of God made man, — His most faithful and loved 
imitators,— the two most lovingly watchful over Him 
and His interests while on earth, — and the two most devoted 
to Him and His Church in Heaven. Here Mary and Joseph 
had beheld the splendors which shone above the hills of 
Bethlehem on the ever-memorable night of the Nativity, as if 
Heaven and its glories were nearer to our earth, — and here 
they, too, we may well believe, heard the voices of the 
Angelic multitude singing " Glory to God in the highest," 



100 ST, ANGELA MERICl 

while the celestial harmonies sounded in vain for all but the 
two lonely worshipers by the crib and the poor simple- 
souled. shepherds in the wilderness. Here Mary's motherly 
heart was thrilled by the arrival of these poor '' watchers on 
the wold," flocking to the roadside cavern to do homage to 
the new-born God of the poor. Alas, and here too were to 
begin the terrors of that same motherly heart and Joseph's 
agony of solicitude, when they had, at the midnight hour, 
to " take the infant" and fly in hot haste across the western 
mountains to the sea-coast and to Egypt, in order to escape 
old Herod's pitiless sword. 

For Angela, — nay, for her fellow-pilgrims from Italy, — 
how eloquent of devotion to the Infant Christ were the tombs 
shown them within the vast Church of St. Mary, — those of 
St. Jerome and his two noble disciples in self-abnegation, 
St. Paula and her daughter Eustochium, and that other great 
Italian, St. Eusebius of Cremona, from Angela's own native 
hills, who had sold .his patrimonial estates to cast his lot with 
Jeiome, — and spread the knowledge and love of the Incar- 
nate God, from Bethlehem and Jerusalem as a centre to the 
uttermost boundaries of Asia! Not unworthy of the living 
faith which inspired her countrywomen in the fourth century, 
A\as the fervor of the holy Maid of Desenzano. Her soul, 
while kneeling near Christ's own birthplace, was flooded 
with light, enabling her to discern the height and depth of 
the mystery of condescension consummated there. The 
poor sightless eyes overflowed with a constant and sweet 
stream of tears, while her whole heart went out to the Divine 
Babe cast with His Mother, at His entrance into our cold 
world, like a ewe with her lamb, forgotten in the storm and 
the darkness, and left to perish by the roadside. 

This abjection, this utter destitution of all human sympathy 
and earthly comfort, it was which touched the stern soul of 



AND THE URSULINE8. 101 

Jerome had moulded it to such exquisite tenderness toward 
Christ and His suffering poor. This too it was that fired the 
hearts of the noble Paula and her daughters, inspiring them 
with a love of poverty so passionate, that their deeds even 
at this distance move our souls to generosity, and their 
words are like coals of living fire, taken from the altar of the 
Lamb and inflaming the reader to heroic love of Christ and 
His Mother.' 



1 Paula was still young when, after the death of her husband, she betook herself to 
Bethlehem with her daughter Eustochium, and founded at her own expense two monas- 
teries, one for women, which she governed herself, and another for men under the di- 
rection of St. Jerome. There both ladies lived and labored till their death, another 
Paula, the granddaughter of the foundress having come to join them in the full flower 
of her youth. 

We may judge of the boundless generosity of this great-souled woman by the follow- 
ing answer to St. Jerome, who was trying to restrain her from ruinous almsgiving. 
*^I have but one wish," she said, " and that is to die a beggar, so poor that I cannot 
leave one penny to my daughter, and that I must be buried in a winding cloth bestowed 
on me through charity. Should I ever be reduced to become a beggar, I shall find 
plenty of people to give me alms; but should I refuse the poor man who now solicits 
my aid, and should he perish of want in consequence, who will be responsible for his 
death, if not I?" She did indeed die without, literally, possessing one cent,— nay, 
heavily in debt for the maintenance of a host of ^he neediest poor. 

Nor must we, in the midst of a calculating generation whose hearts are narrowed by 
the perpetual seeking of self and self-interest, and whose minds are being gradually 
poisoned by the scientific materialism propagated by printing press and professor's 
chair, and lecturer's platform,— think that this sublime love of the God of Bethlehem 
and of His poverty, had extinguished in the souls of these ardent followers of His 
any of the natural and hallowed home-affections which He enjoined and consecrated 
by His own example. Listen, rather, to the words of the eloquent author of " The 
Monks of the West," and judge for yourself, dear reader: 

*' One likes to know that these most austere Christians, these Roman ladies, possessed 
of so high a courage in combatting their o\^ti inclinations, cherished in their hearts a 
deep spring of tenderness, and clung fervently to the domestic ties which they did not 
sever in devoting their lives to God. Motherly love and filial piety still overflowed in 
these brave hearts. During the funeral service of Plesilla, her oldest daughter, Paula, 
could not repress her grief, and fell into a swoon so deadly, that her life was in danger. 
St. Jerome found it necessary in order to reconcile her with the Di^^ne Will, to write 
her an eloquent letter, in which he made use of authority and persuasion, comdncing 
her that her excessive grief scandalized the heathen, and redounded to the dishonor of 
the Church and the monastic profession. 

*' When, twenty years later (404), Paula herself died in her monastery of Bethlehem, 



102 ST, ANGELA MEBICl 

If Angela's soul was so deeply moved by contact with 
the sacred soil of Bethlehem; if the vivid light vouchsafed 
to the interior sense more than compensated the loss of her 
eyesight, how much more powerful must have been her 
emotions as they led her, in Jerusalem itself, along every 
stage which the Man of Sorrows followed during his 
passion? how much more abundant the clear knowledge 
imparted to her concerning these unfathomed depths of the 
Infinite Love? 

It is certain that while kneeling in the Garden of Geth- 
semane, and on Mount Calvary, and again by the side of the 
Holy Sepulchre, Angela could not contain herself. Her love 
and compassion for the Divine Sufferer broke forth in great 
heart-cries, which melted all who heard them. Little cared 
she then, absorbed as she was in the contemplation of all 
these realities of incomprehensible mercy, for the darkness 
which had fallen so suddenly on her bodily sense. She only 
yearned, she only craved to be made more and more like to 
the Master. 

She was permitted again and again to revisit the theatre 
of our Lord's sufferings, each time with a sensible increase of 
fervor and comfort, — praying all the while that He for whom 
alone she wished to live, labor, suffer, and die, would en- 



Eustochium after nursing her mother in her last illness with the most indefatigable as- 
siduity, had to run from her death-bed to the grotto in which the Saviour was bom, 
and, prostrate there, to beseech Him with tears and ardent supplications to grant 
her the grace of dying then and there and to be buried with her parent, St. Jerome 
held again to interfere, in order to combat this natural weakness, and to remove the 
orphaned nun from her saintly mother's remains. These were despositedin a tomb in 
the rock alongside the Cavern of the Nativity ; and on chis tomb Jerome engraved an 
epitaph of which this is a translation: 

''Berereposes Patjla the daughter of the Scipios and Paulus JEmil^us, desce.ided from 
the Ch^acchi and Agamemnon: She was the first of the Senatorial order to forsake 
tier family, Rome her birthplace, her fortune, and her children, in order to lead a life 
tf poverty in Bethlehem, near Thy crib, Christ, where the Wise Men worshipped in 
Thee both Man and (rOC?."— Montalembert, " Monks of the West," vol. 1., pp. 176, 177. 



AND THE URSULINES, 103 

lighten her and guide her surely in all things relating to the 
work He would have her accomplish for His glory. 

And so, unconscious herself of the veneration with which 
she was regarded by all who approached her in Jerusalem, — 
by the Franciscan monks and nuns as well as by her fellow- 
pilgrims, — she had at length to tear herself away from a place 
in which she would fain have dwelt forever. But feeble, 
blind, and helpless as she was, and utterly unworthy as she 
deemed herself, she knew that she was not called to labor 
there. Her field of action and trial lay in her native land, — 
in Brescia. And, like Paul, after he had been stricken blind 
on the road to Damascus,— she allowed herself to be led by 
the hand, anxious only to do the Divine Will, and to allow 
not one particle of the grace from on high to fall useless on 
her soul and her life. 



CHAPTER Vin. 



THE LIGHT INCREASING. 



Our pilgrims had left Venice in the end of May; the 
month of September was far advanced when they turned 
their backs on the Holy City. It would appear, that they 
took the road which leads northward to Er-ram (the 
Ramah of the Bible), and thence towards the west, across 
the lofty range on which stood Mizpah and Gibeah of Saul, 
through the broad Suleiman Valley to Lydda and Jaffa. 
We say "it would appear;" for the pilgrims were forced to 
remain "eight entire days" shut up in Rama through fear 
of a band of brigands who were lying in wait for travelers 
in the mountain passes. The marauders, either wearied by 
this long delay, or thinking that the caravan of pilgrims had 
taken the more southern road through Ramleh, disappeared, 
and left Angela and her companions free to continue their 
journey to the coast. We must not imagine that Italian 
pilgrims of the sixteenth century were so unfamiliar with the 
topography of Palestine, or so unacquainted with the great 
events connected with each memorable place they passed on 
their way to and from the Holy City, as to find in these en- 
forced delays, and in such a spot as Rama, anything but 
most abundant food for mind and heart. 

Rama, the birth-place of Samuel, and his home while con- 
104 



ST. ANGELA MERICL 105 

trolling the destinies of Israel, was identified from the earliest 
Christian ages with the highest mountain-summit near 
Jerusalem, now known as Neby-Samweel (the Tomb of 
Samuel). It is mentioned by St. Jerome, — who lived so long 
in Palestine, — as being situated ''near Gabaa (Gibeah of 
Saul) at the seventh milestone from Jerusalem." Around 
the summits of Neby-Samweel and Gabaa are Betli- 
Horon, Gilgal, and Mizpah. In Gabaa Saul was anointed 
king by Samuel; from Beth-Horon Josue commanded the 
sun to stand still; Mizpah was the great watch-tower and 
stronghold of Israel in all the national struggles. There 
Samuel called the nation together to confess their sins to 
Jehovah, as a preliminary to their being freed from the 
yoke of the Philistines; there too Saul's previous selection 
by God and his consecration by Samuel were ratified by the 
solemn choice of the assembled people. It was with Bethel 
and Gilgal one of the three holy cities where Samuel suc- 
cessively held his sessions as Judge of Israel. And at 
Gabaa the Ark of the Covenant abode before its translation 
to Jerusalem. 

The first Crusaders were well acquainted with the claims 
of these and other memorable places in the veneration of the 
Christian world. They may have been sometimes misled as 
to the fixing of certain localities; they were always right 
as to the feeling which prompted their acts of piety and 
generosity. They built a beautiful church around the tomb 
of Samuel at Ramah, and erected a monastery near it, — just 
as they graced the traditional tombs of Rachel near Bethle- 
hem, and those of Abraham and Sara at Hebron, with similar 
structures. What they did in Bethlehem itself, in Jerusalem, 
at IN'azareth, and elsewhere, is too well known to require 
anything but the merest allusion. 

Near the remains of the great Prophet-Judge of Israel, 



106 ST. ANGELA MEEICl, 

then, Angela and her companions were forced to remain for 
an entire week. She and they were too well informed in 
Sacred History not to profit by their stay in a place so full 
of the most thrilling memories. They could, indeed, from the 
dominating crest of Neby-Samweel, take in from horizon to 
horizon every scene consecrated by the visible display of God's 
power and mercy Desolate and barren as the boundless 
panorama of hills to the east and south appeared under the 
late September sun, — they knew how beauteous and blooming 
the land was when Josue's conquering hosts first swept over 
it. But Angela's soul needed not the aid of the outward 
sense, to know what feet had trodden these mountains and 
valleys, and how near God had once been, in His loving pro- 
tection to the privileged race who possessed them. She was 
in the home where Anna with tears and prayers had ob- 
tained from the Lord and Giver of life the birth of her 
blessed boy Samuel; and here too it was that she reared him 
so tenderly and so holily, forming him to that lov'e of 
prayer and habitual sense of the divine Presence, which 
were to be the great features of his character and the potent 
weapons of his glorious administration. On this same spot 
the devoted mother, — even when her boy had been given up 
to the service of Jehovah, — yearly wrought for him with her 
own hands the Nazarite robes which Samuel wore before the 
Lord. 

Angela, who would have gladly travelled on her knees 
through the length and breadth of the Holy Land, and whose 
heart had poured itself forth in such rapturous adoration in 
Bethlehem and Jerusalem, was also destined to be the mother 
of a long line of indefatigable workers in Christ's chosen vine- 
yard. She had seen the beautiful places of Italy laid waste 
by contending hosts, and all promise of a spiritual harvest 
destroyed by the evil passions of men. Oh, if she could 



AND THE URSULINE8. 107 

only save Christian homes in her own dear native land from 
the utter desolation threatened by interminable strife and 
the scandals which ever follow swift and strong on the heels 
of strife! If she could only sow in the souls of the young of 
her own sex, all over warring, convulsed, and divided Christ- 
endom, the supernatural faith and practical virtues which 
would be compensation for the moral ruin she was forced 
to contemplate! She felt the conviction growing stronger 
in her soul every day she spent on that sacred soil, treading 
in the footsteps of the Master and Shepherd of souls, — that 
the family she was destined to found was to be instrumental 
in repairing the ruins of the present, and preparing a new 
and faithful generation to Christ. And, if she clung with 
regret to those hilltops, so often illumed by the splendors of 
God's revelation to man, she was also impelled to hasten 
homeward to begin in earnest the great work allotted to 
her. 

The pilgrims pursued their journey without molestation, 
embarked at Joppa, and, after touching at Cyprus, where 
some of the merchant pilgrims took in a stock of wares, 
they once more made sail for Canea in the Isle of Candia. 
They made but a brief stay in this port, which painfully re- 
called to Angela the loss of her sight ; but brief as it was, it was 
marked by a miracle that raised her still higher m the es- 
teem of her fellow-travellers, and was soon noised abroad 
all over Upper Italy. In one of the churches of Canea was an 
image of our Crucified Saviour, which had been made by the 
Divine Goodness the instrument of many wonderful cures; 
and Angela happening to hear of it, was suddenly inspired 
to go to the spot, and there implore of Him the restoration 
of her eyesight. Her companions resolved to accompany 
her in a body, headed by Monsignor Paola della Puglia, 
private chamberlain to the Pope, and who had joined their 



108 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

band in Jerusalem. Angela, when she was led to th« foot of 
the venerated image, lifted her soul to Him whose Sepulchre 
she had so lately visited, and in whose presence she ever- 
more dwelt by day and by night. "My Lord and my 
Saviour," — she prayed, — " were my life to be spent in soli- 
tude and employed solely in procuring my own sanctification, 
it would be of no account to remain thus in darkness all my 
days. But Thou hast made known to me that I was to de- 
vote myself to the salvation of others, and this blindness 
renders me helpless ctpu for my wn need. If it be, there- 
fore, to Thy glory and the furthering of Thy interests that I 
should recover my sight, do Thou, O Lord, restore it to 
Thy handmaid. If I can serve Thee equally in this my 
helplessness, then, dear Lord, let me continue blind to my 
dying day " 

Scarcely had she pnded this ^hort and fervent prayer, 
vrhen she cried out that she could see; and the astonished 
assistants fiocked around her to congratulate her and to join 
their thanksgiving with hers. How her trusting and gener- 
ous friends Romani and Biancosi now felt rewarded for their 
fidelity to her, their compliance with her wishes, and the 
pious care with which they had watched over her every foot- 
step during this long and perilous journey! There was but 
little time left for congratulations, however, as the pilgrims' 
chip had to set sail that very day, — the 4th of October, 1524. 
The Governor of Candia embarked with them this time, and 
two other merchant ships with rich cargoes. Many pas- 
sengers,— among whom were several noble Venetians, — sailed 
in company with them. Scarcely, however, had they reached 
the Ionian Sea, between Sicily and the Morea, when all three 
vessels were assailed by one of those sudd n and furious 
storms so frequent and so fatal in that part of the Medi- 
terranean. During three entire days and nights they were 



AXD THE URSULINES. 109 

at the mercy of the winds and waves; the two vessels 
which had left Canea with them foundered beneath their 
eyes, perishing with all on board, while the pilgrims' ship 
was only preserved by what all her company believed to be 
a visible interposition of Providence. 

And their preservation, under God, they were unanimous 
in attributing to the holy Maid of Desenzano. From the 
very first appearance of danger, they all turned to her as to 
the one person whose prayers could help to save them. She 
was so calm, so retiring, so humble, and prayerful in the 
midst of the elemental uproar and the general consternation. 
From the first also she bade them, with a serene and smiling 
countenance to put their trust in Him who rules the storm and 
the whirlwind. She remained in almost uninterrupted prayer, 
while the hurricane grew in violence, appearing in the midst 
of frightened crew and passengers, when, at the end of the 
third day, they beheld the other ships going down before 
their eyes, — to exhort them to do their duty by their own ship, 
while trusting themselves absolutely to the divine protection. 

For six other days and nights they continued to drive 
helplessly before the wind, fearful all this time lest the 
storm should drive them on the coast of Africa into the 
hands of the Tunisian or Algerine pirates. This fate would 
have been a worse calamity than either death or shipwreck. 
But Angela bade them have no fear. 

At length the wind fell and the sun reappeared, but only 
to show them how very near they were to the haunts of the 
Mohammedan corsairs. The ship's head was forthwith 
turned toward the coast of Albania, which they soon reached, 
anchoring in the bay of Durazzo, where the Venetian flag 
still waved proudly. A Turkish fleet had also taken refuge 
there from the recent storm, and this incident was not with- 
out its danger to them. The Turks were for the moment the 



110 ST. ANGELA MERICL 

strongest on sea, and resolved to pursue and capture the 
pilgrims' ship. But even in this extrenaity Angela's prophetic 
voice encouraged them, when they had refitted and taken, 
in the necessary supplies, to set sail with all secrecy and ex- 
pedition, promising them a favorable wind and a happy ter- 
mination to their journey. 

They did not hesitate to obey her, and the issue turned 
out as she had predicted. They arrived safely at Citta 
Nova, on the coast of Istria, opposite to Venice, and thence 
leisurely continued their voyage to the end. 

One may easily conceive how dear all these occurrences 
had rendered Angela to the entire ship's company, and with 
what veneration they spoke of her on their landing at Venice. 
The arrival of the pilgrims' ship, like its departure, was 
always an occasion of great solemnity in the beautiful city. 
No one who joined the pilgrims in solemn procession to the 
High Altar of St. Mark's but was shown the gentle Tertiary 
of St. Francis, who had been stricken so suddenly with 
blindness on the voyage and had been so suddenly cured; 
whose presence had been to all of her fellow-passengers a 
pledge of safety amid the storm and the shipwreck, and 
whose angelic modesty, exceeding austerity of life, sweet 
and unoffensive piety, and superior wisdom had been from 
first to last their admiration and their model. She, mean- 
while, utterly unconscious of all but the one overwhelming 
sense of gratitude to the Fatherly Providence which was 
guiding her in all her ways, passed up the Grand Canal with 
its crowd of barges and gondolas and the joyous multitude 
who from both sides saluted the returning pilgrims, passed 
up the glorious square of St. Mark's to the shining portals 
of the incomparable Cathedral, and into the crowded aisles 
within, intent only on kneeling before the Mercy Seat, and 
pouring forth there the full tide of her love and thanksgiving. 



AND THE URSULINES, HI 

She soon stole away from the thronged church and the busy 
streets to take refuge with her Franciscan sisters in the 
Convent of the Holy Sepulchre. 

She had been, nevertheless, the cynosure of all eyes on that 
day, — and the public veneration much more even than the 
public curiosity followed her to the hospitable retreat which 
the Franciscans provided for pilgrims to the Holy Land. 
Fallen, as Venice was in the year of grace 1524, both from 
her proud eminence as a political power and from the simple- 
minded piety of her most glorious days, — she had not yet 
ceased to value the glory of possessing one saintly man or 
woman born on her soil, above the wealth of the East or the 
homage of the West. Even on the night of Angela's arrival 
from Palestine, it was a subject of discussion among her 
merchant-princes as well as among her population of seamen 
and soldiers how they might best retain in their city one 
who was so manifestly the favorite of Heaven. In her 
native town of Desenzano, as well as in Brescia, Angela had 
shone as the indefatigable friend of the suffering poor, and 
as the wise and zealous guide of the young persons of her own 
sex who sought to emulate her charity, or her extraordinary 
self-abnegation. There were in Venice magnificent institutions 
devoted to the varied purposes of Christian beneficence; and 
there were also among all classes of her citizens very many 
young souls who, while they found no encouragement to enter 
the monastic profession, were still desirous of serving in the 
world the poor of Christ, and sanctifying their own souls 
by a life of self-crucifixion. 

It was suggested to the magistrates of the Republic, — 
probably by Senator Giustiniani, who had headed the pil- 
grimage to the Holy Land, — that Angela Merici would be 
the very best person to whom could be given the general 
Buperintendence of these great charitable institutions. She, 



112 ST. ANGELA MERICI 

wearing as she did the Franciscan habit, would encourage 
others of her own sex to embrace a similar mode of life, and 
thus Venice would possess a body of holy women living in 
the world an unwordly life, rendering active piety attractive 
and admirable by their own daily virtues, and ministering 
faithfully to the bodily and spiritual needs of the laboring 
population of a great commercial metropolis. 

They approached Angela with a proposition to this effect. 
This was assailing her by her weak side, — the prospect of a 
field of labor far wider, and a harvest of good incomparably 
greater than Brescia could present even during a long period 
of peace and security. And what prospect was there in that 
same autumn in 1524, that Brescia, still occupied by a Spanish 
garrison, with the French armies even then returning across 
the Alps into Upper Italy, — should be otherwise than it had 
been for half a century, — like a low-lying peninsula between 
two adverse tides, forever inundated by the raging waters, 
and offering scarcely a safe foothold for man or beast amid 
the hostile elements? 

Still Angela's soul, during the six months of her eventful 
pilgrimage, had become more than ever impressed with the 
distinct conviction, that the Divine Voice had appointed 
Brescia as her field of future labor. And from obedience to 
its direction, no temptation of an apparently greater good 
could divert her. She answered those who thus honored her 
by making this proposal, with the gentle modesty and 
womanly tact which ever marked her intercourse with men 
of the world. It would seem that they did not understand 
her as giving them a peremptory refusal. For Angela, 
fearing that the public authorities might interfere to detain 
her in Venice, persuaded Romani and Biancosi to leave the 
city with her that same night, and to take the direct road 
to Brescia. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WAITING AND WORKING. 

Angela and her two companions arrived in Brescia on the 
25th of November. She was warmly welcomed by those 
who were thenceforward to consider themselves her fellow- 
citizens, both because her father and the Merici family had 
long been inscribed among the free burgesses of the place, 
and because her own many devoted services, her gentle vir- 
tues, and the shining light of her holy life, had made her 
most dear to the entire city. There was another reason; she 
had more than once declared that God Himself willed her to 
do a great work there. 

A great work she had, indeed, already achieved among 
them during the period of Brescia's most terrible calamities. 
This, however, the citizens looked upon as only the pledge 
of a mightier performance. They had not favored her pil- 
grimage to the Holy Land. Antonio dei Romani did not 
win many compliments for his volunteering to be Angela's 
guide on so distant a journey, at a most troublous epoch, and 
when his own city sadly needed the presence of every man 
and woman who could help to build up wide-spread ruin, and 
bind up wounds that seemed beyond all healing, — save only 
from the All-healing hand of the Creator. 

It might thus seem that the circumstances amid which 

113 



114 ST, ANGELA MERICl 

Sister Angela entered this ancient city/ were most propitious 
to her project. It was far otherwise, however; just when 
Angela was preparing for her departure to Jerusalem, the 
French invading army under Bonnivet and Bayard were 
driven back to France through the valleys of upper Pied- 
monts—the latter heroic soldier, who had lain wounded in 

Brescia during the horrible assault and massacre of 1512, 

perishing on the battle-field. But the retiring wave of in- 
vasion was to return more impetuous and terrible than ever 
before Angela re-entered Brescia on that memorable 25th of 
November. All through the wmter months, Francis I. 
poured his troops into the Milanese; and on the 24th day of 
February, 1525, the hostile armies of France and Spain with 
their respective Italian allies, met near Pavia, the French being 
utterly defeated, and their king remaining a prisoner in the 
hands of the Imperialists. Pope Adrian VI., who had suc- 



JCatuUus (died B. C. 47), who was a native of the neighboring city of Verona, calls 
Brescia the parent-city. This ill-starred place was again bombarded by the Austrians 
under Marshal Haynau in 1849. ''The view from the castle (citadel) of Brescia, is 
indeed a noble one. And it is not a mere noble view; it is a view on which the charac- 
teristic history of Italy is legibly written. . . . With a single glance of the eye we look 
down on a crowd of cities, each of which was once an independent commonwealth, 
with its name and place in history. On one side are the spurs of the Alps on which 
we are standing, reminding us that there is a land beyond, from which the Emperors 
came down to demand the crowns of Italy and Rome. . To the far East we get a glimpse 
of smaller hills on the same horizon, suggesting that the natural ramparts of Verona 
are not beyond our sight. But to the south the eye ranges over the boundless plains of 
Lombardy, spreading like a sea, with a tall tower here and there, like the mast of a 
solitary vessel. Each of these towers marks a city, a city which once ranked alongside 
of princes, a city making war and peace, and containing within its walls the full life of 
a nation. The map seems to show that one of them is the mighty tower of Placenzia, 
and that another is the yet mightier tower of Cremona, the fellow-worker of Brescia in 
the great work of restoring Milan. . . We have vividly brought home to us how near 
the great cities of Northern Italy lie to the Alpine barrier, the barrier which was so 
often found helpless to shelter them against the Northern invader. We think of all 
the conquerors who have crossed the mountains from Hannibal to our own day. . . 
From such a point we may well run over the shifting fates of the land before us from 
Brennus to either Bonaparte."— i^Ve^wa/j. 



AJW THE URSULINES, 115 

ceeded Leo X., had persuaded the Repubhc of Venice to be- 
come the ally of Spain, after having been long faithful to 
France. But Adrian, who was a Spanish subject, only gov- 
erned the Church during twenty months; and his successor 
Clement VIL, Avho was an Italian, reversed Adrian's policy, 
separated from Spain, and allied himself with France. There- 
fore, after the disaster of Pavia, the Pope was left defenceless. 

It was the year of jubilee, nevertheless; and Christians 
not only from all parts of Italy but from every country in 
Christendom were preparing to visit Rome, in spite of the 
armies and bands of marauders who watched the passes of 
the Alps and beset every road within Italy itself. In the 
universal alarm, distress and uncertainty, Angela could not 
think of establishing a congregation. Sooth to say, she did 
not see her way clearly as to the precise object and form of 
the society she contemplated. 

What better,— in this unsettled condition of public affairs 
as well as of her own plans, — could she do, than go to the Shrine 
of the Holy Apostles, and seek there not only an increase of 
light for her own mind, but the direction of the great and 
wise men who ruled the councils of the Holy See? Her own 
countryman, — the noble and saint-like Cajetan de Tiene, now 
a cardinal, had been one of the most trusted counselors of 
Pope Adrian VI. While she had been on her way to Pales- 
tine, in June, 1524, Cajetan and Cardinal Caraffa had ob- 
tained from Adrian the approbation of a new order of Reg- 
ular Priests, thenceforward known as "Theatines." Would 
not the holy Cardinal of Tiene enlighten and assist her in her 
perplexity? 

To Rome she therefore went, accompanied by several pious 
ladies and gentlemen of Brescia, to whom her presence on 
the journey was considered to be a sure pledge of the divine 
protection. Among her companions were two excellent priests 



116 ST. ANGELA MEBIGl 

and Antonio dei Romani, whose veneration for Angela 
would not permit him to trust her to the guardianship of 
strangers. There was, for the Brescians and for all who 
were still subject to the sway of Venice, a special motive for 
being present in Rome during the solemnities of the Jubilee. 
The Pope had declared his intention to beatify, during *the 
month of May, Laurence Justinian (Giustiniani), patriarch 
of Venice, who died in 1455, one of the most heroic souls 
who ever graced the priesthood of the Christian Church, — 
the boast and pride of the grand old Republic in her decline. 

His near relative had been Angela's pi^otector during her 
memorable pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and he together with 
the most distinguished members of his illustrious family, 
and the Duke of Venice, Andrea Gritti, were to represent 
Venice at Rome on the solemn occasion. Thus the great 
Republic had a particular interest in securing the safety of 
all those of her children who visited Rome in this year of 
Jubilee. And so, — although a terrible pestilence was prev- 
alent all over the Peninsula, — all who gloried in the name 
of Venice and revered the name of her saintly archbishop, 
braved every danger and obstacle in order to visit the 
Eternal City. And, — in very truth, — the Venetians and 
Upper Italians formed the majority of the comparatively 
email concourse of pilgrims. So unsettled and threatening 
was the aspect of public affairs, and so deadly were the 
ravages of the plague, which seemed sent on the land to com- 
plete the fearful destruction wrought by war! 

Angela, as was her wont, lived during the entire journey 
on what she could get by begging from door to door. ISTo 
entreaties of Romani or her other fellow-pilgrims could in- 
duce her to change her ordinary mode of life. She forgot, 
while in the capital of the Christian world, everything but 
the one great purpose for which she had journeyed thither, — 



AJS^JJ THE URSULINES, II7 

the obtaining in its fulness the grace of the Jubilee, the 
heart-satisfaction found by the true Christian in visiting the 
most venerable sanctuaries in Christendom, the delight felt 
in proclaiming by her every act and word, while near the 
shrines of the Holy Apostles, her allegiance to the See of 
Peter at a time when others were revolting against it, — 
and then the crowning grace of knowing more clearly the 
Divine Will in her own regard and the courage to fulfill 
it perfectly. 

The fervor with which she visited the churches of Rome 
was scarcely inferior to that which had so mnch edified her 
companions in Jerusalem. Indeed her reputation had pre- 
ceded her. The princesses of the Gonzaga family from 
Mantua and Castiglione were residing temporarily in Eome, 
and they, like many others from Northern Italy, were 
loud in their praise of Sister Angela's saintly virtues. 
Monsignor della Puglia, who had learned to revere her in 
Palestine, and on the journey homeward, soon renewed his 
acquaintance with her. To the Holy Father he had more 
than once spoken of her as a living saint, relating how she 
had miraculously recovered her eyesight in Candia, and 
how all the ship's conapany attributed to her prayers their 
preservation from shipwreck and their escape from the 
Turkish fleet. To Angela herself he had shown every 
possible mark of respect during her stay in Rome, and to 
perfect her satisfaction he obtained for her a private audi- 
ence with Clement VII. 

Angela was too sincerely humble not to feel the deepest 
gratitude for this favor, and too forgetful of self to feel 
disconcerted in presence of the Yicar of Christ. She was 
too familiar with Him in His sacramental presence, and in the 
sweet and uninterrupted communion of prayer and contem- 
plation, — to feel abashed when she knelt before His repre- 



118 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

sentative. The Holy Father spoke to her with extraordinary 
kindness, and at great length, questioning her closely on her 
manner of life and her projects for the future. Her answers 
confirmed the high estimate he had been led to form of her 
modesty, her disinterestedness, her devotion to the poor, 
and her singular tact and discretion. He expressed the wish 
that she would remain in Rome, promising to further to 
the utmost her zeal for all good works. He even offered to 
give her the direction of any one of the charitable institu- 
tions that she might prefer. 

This compelled the honorable daughter of St. Francis to 
lay open to the Holy Father the history of her soul, — her 
visions and the distinct command to establish in Brescia a 
society of religious women. Everything which he heard 
from her and saw in her, convinced Clement that the hand of 
God was there. Without however, — as is the wont of the 
Holy See, — expressing any opinion on the truth of the 
visions themselves. His Holiness encouraged her to persevere 
in her manner of life, and dismissed her with his blessing. 

Father Salvatori adds that, when she had left, the Pope 
reproved his chamberlain for his lack of discernment, telling 
him that there were in Angela much higher qualities than he 
had described, and that it would be a great privilege to keep 
her in Rome. 

Alas for Rome and for the Pope! Ere twice a twelve- 
month had passed, the walls of the Eternal Gity would be scaled 
by the German Lutheran bands of the murderous Frunds- 
perg, fighting under the imperial standard of Spain, and led 
on by the French Duke of Bourbon! To the shame of the 
clergy and people of Rome one of their own noblest fami- 
lies, — the Colonna, — were but too zealous within Rome's 
walls to introduce the sacrilegious assailants! And for two 
whole months every Church in Rome was to run with blood, 



AND THE URSULINE8. 119 

every monastery and private dwelling-house to be the prey of 
a brutal soldiery, while Pope Clement was to look on, helpless 
and forsaken by the whole world, a prisoner within the castle 
of S. Angelo ! "Never perhaps," says the Protestant his- 
torian Sismondi, " in the history of the world was a great 
capital city given over to a more atrocious abuse of victory; 
never was a powerful army made up of such ferocious 
soldiers, or freed from every restraint of discipline; and 
never did the prince in whose name the army fought mani- 
fest so utter an indifference to the calamities endured by 
the vanquished. . . . Every dwelling resounded with the 
shrieks and w^ailings of the wretched inhabitants, who were 
put to the torture; the squares before the churches w^ere 
strewn with altar furniture, relics, and all manner of sacred 
objects, which the soldiers cast into the streets after having 
torn off the gold and silver ornaments. The German Luth- 
erans, uniting fanaticism with their greed of spoil, vied with 
each other in showing their contempt for the worship of the 
Roman Church, and in profaning the very things which 
would have been respected by the nations they called 
heathen." " The Goths," says Gibl)on, — " evacuated Rome, 
at the end of six days; but Rome continued to be during 
nine whole months the victim of the Imperialists, — and every 
day and hour during this time was marked by some abomin- 
able act of ferocity, licentiousness or rapine. The authority 
of Alaric knew how to impose limits to the licentiousness of 
the barbarous multitude who hailed him as fellow-soldier or 
chief; but the death of the Duke of Bourbon in scaling the 
walls, left without chief or restraint or discipline an army 
composed of Italians, Germans and Spaniards." The prince 
of Orange, who assumed the command after the fall of 
Bourbon, had too many theological passions to gratify to 
allow him to put a stop to murder and rapine and sacrilege* 



120 ST. ANGELA MEBICL 

We clare not venture on the details of this fearful picture. 
If Angela's eyes, when they rested for the last time on the 
throne of St. Peter and the spires and battlements of 
Rome, had been illumined with a prophetic light to see the 
black storm which was gathering in the heavens, or if her 
ears could have heard from afar the tramp of Bourbon and 
Leyva's impious legions, — how dark for her would have ap- 
peared the summer skies of her beloved Italy, and how cursed 
the teeming earth which was condemned to bear the tread 
of these monsters! 

As it was, she turned her steps homeward, rejoicing that 
to the Vicar of Christ had been disclosed the inmost secrets 
of her soul and the most cherished aims of her life, — that 
his voice had commended them and his hand blessed them. 
The plague was to be the dread avenger of blood and sacri- 
lege and robbery. Of the thirty thousand barbarians who 
glutted all their evil passions in the City of the Holy Mar- 
tyrs, in the home of the common Father of Christians, but 
a small remnant was destined to revisit their native land. 
The pestilence was waiting for the spoilers and their spoil 
along every road and pathway from Home to the Alps and 
the straits of Sicily. 



CHAPTER X. 

INEVITABLE OBSTACLES. 

. The political and social condition of Brescia, — indeed, of 
the wliole of Upper Italy, — during the autumn of 1525, and 
throughout the next five years, was such as to render the 
execution of Angela's project hopeless and impossible. Pope 
Clement VII did not wish to see the Emperor Charles V. 
attain to universal domination in Christendom. Charles had 
treated Francis I., during the latter's imprisonment at 
Madrid with intolerable harshness, — imposing on him as one 
of the only conditions on which he could regain his liberty, 
the dismemberment of his kingdom. This was a stipulation 
to which the captive monarch could not lawfully agree, and 
to which, in order to recover his freedom, he gave a fraudu- 
lent assent. The partition of the French monarchy thus 
left Charles not only rightful sovereign of Spain and its 
newly discovered transatlantic empire, but the lord paramount 
of all Germany and the Low Countries, the sole undisputed 
arbiter of Italy, where he possessed Milan and the kingdoms 
of Naples and Sicily, — the master indeed of all Western 
Europe, with the exception of England. Even Henry VIII. 
of England deserted the overruling Spanish monarch and 
sided with the French King, with whom were now allied the 
Pope, Venice, Florence, and Francesco II. of Milan. 

121 



123 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

Francis I. was liberated from prison in March, 1526, and 
lost not a moment in rousing his people to revenge. The 
stipulation made with Charles V. was repudiated by the 
French nation, and powerful armies were again sent in hot 
haste into Upper Italy. These were destined to defeat, 
proving helpless to withstand the imperial forces under 
Bourbon and Frundsperg. And so all Lombardy and Venetia 
continued to be the battle-field on which France, Spain, and 
Germany contended for European supremacy and the pos- 
session of Italy's most beautiful provinces! Alas for the 
cities which lay, like Brescia, nearest to the Alps and to 
the great highways across this mighty mountain-banier! 
What could Angela do when she reentered once more the 
hospitable mansion of Antonio dei Romani ? The whole city 
and the surrounding 'districts were agitated by the most 
alarming rumors. Industry of every kind was paralyzed, 
nor amid the perpetual fears and tumults of war, was any 
leisure left for the cultivation of the sweet Christian virtues, 
any more than for the study of the arts of peace. Men's 
minds were unsettled by these ever-recurring conflicts be- 
tween Christian princes, in which all the most sacred pre- 
cepts of religion, and all the most inviolable rights of humanity 
were utterly disregarded, — while religion herself, by her 
being dragged perforce as a party into all these unhallowed 
quarrels, incurred the aversion or the contempt of friends 
and foes. 

The only remedy to these crying and seemingly intermin- 
able ills, lay in fostering with redoubled care all the home- 
sanctities of the Christian family, in the increase of regularity 
and fervor in the Religious orders and the clergy. This 
was Angela's aim all through the long darkness and desola- 
tion of these sad years. She did not, however, attempt to 
exhort others to the practice of any one virtue with which 



AJW THE UESULINES. 123 

she had not previously made herself familiar. On her return 
from Rome, and when the whole atmosphere of Upper Italy- 
was aflame with the j^reparations for the impending war, 
the humble daughter of St. Francis, acting under the in- 
spiration of that unearthly wisdom which is the sure guide 
of souls, began to increase not only her private austerities 
but her long and prayerful vigils. She said to the truly 
pious souls who were bound to her by friendship, and who 
looked up to her for counsel, what she was ever saymg to 
herself, — that the divine wrath could only be turned away 
from sinful Italy, and the woes of the Church be ended, only 
by the blood and tears and incessant supplications of all the 
true children of God. Without ceasing any of her charitable 
labors for the sick and the poor of Brescia, — indeed, while 
increasing them, — she led, from the Autumn of 1525, a life of 
uninterrupted penitential rigor and continual pleading with 
the Divine Mercy. Still, although she constantly exhorted 
others to fast and pray for the peace of their common 
country, for the prosperity of the Church, and the relief of 
the Holy Father, — there were but, very, very few of her most 
intimate acquaintances who were allowed to witness the ex- 
tremity to which Angela carried her aiieterities and her per- 
severance in prayer. 

We have only to recall how St. Teresa and St. John of the 
Cross made their lives one of continual and fearful self- 
crucifixion, while laboring to restore the pristine purity and 
fervor of the Carmelite Order in Christendom, as well as 
to atone to the Divine Justice for the decrease of practical 
faith in Spanish society, and the loss of. holiness in Spanish 
homes. 

We remember also how St. Rose, — the first flower of 
American saintliness, — and her near relative, Marianna de 
Paredes, " The Lily of Quito," atoned by a life of appalling 



124 'ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

rigor for the sensuality of their countrywomen and the 
wrongs inflicted by Christians on the South American native 
races. But there is another Spanish-American saint, whose 
example can enable us still better to grasp the purpose and 
the spirit of Angela Merici's self-inflicted punishment and 
unceasing intercession with the Divine Majesty during these 
years of Italy's agony and of the Church's humiliation. 
The Blessed Peter Claver,-^the Apostle of Cartagena in 
New Grenada, — had chosen as his special task to evangelize 
the numerous slave population of that city and province. It 
was no easy task to make the hearts of the slave-owners and 
slave-merchants pitiful towards their wretched thralls, or to 
win a way to the darkened souls and angry hearts of the 
poor, deeply-wronged Negroes themselves. How then did 
the man of God, — the most glorious specimen of Christian 
nanhood who ever lived on American soil, — fit himself to 
appease the Majesty of Heaven offended by such monstrous 
inhumanity, and to win grace with both masters and slaves? 
His life was, during half a century, one of continual and 
gigantic labors, sanctified by prayer and self-crucifixion. 
When he returned in the evening or late at night from his 
fearful toil on board the slave-ships, in the slave-pens on 
shore, or in the leprosy hospitals, he would only taste of the 
coarsest food he could find, mixing even that with ashes and 
bitter herbs. Besides while preaching, catechising, baptizing 
his catechumens, tending the sick and the dying, and discharg- 
ing the manifold duties of his priestly oflSce in a populous sea- 
port and amid such a mass of spiritual distress and bodily 
suffering, — he was covered literally from head to foot with 
hair-cloth studded with sharp iron points and nails. The 
historians of his life almost terrify the reader by the mere 
unexaggerated description of his nightly flagellations and 
protracted vigils. And all thism an equatorial climate! 



AI^D TEE URSULINES. 125 

We may think what we please, — but if we believe that He 
who is the dear Father of our souls, the Man of Sorrows, 
came to atone for a sinful world, to save and sanctify man- 
kind, and to be our model, we must feel that Claver and 
Xavier, and Ignatius Loyola, and Teresa, and Angela Merici 
only copied the examples set them by the Master. He was 
born in a stable, brought up in the carpenter's shop, had no 
home of His own while fulfilling His public mission, spent 
whole nights watching and praying on the hill-tops after the 
superhuman toils of the day, and was scourged, crowned 
with thorns, laden with His own cross, and crucified between 
two thieves! There is the only Light for man or woman 
who would labor actively and successfully in helping to raise, 
to save, to sanctify the world around them in their own day 
and generation, as well as afterward. 

So, dear reader, if you hear that the. holy Maid of 
Desenzano, after having received the blessing of Christ's 
Vicar on herself and her designs, returns to disturbed and 
still half -ruined Brescia, only to pray more fervently, to weep 
more abundantly, to afflict her own body more assiduously 
than ever before, — you must know that it is because she sees 
that the scourge is heavier than ever before on her beloved 
native land, on God's people, on His Vicar, and on the 
Church; and that new and fearful perils are threatening the 
souls for whom Christ died. When Herod-Agrippa im- 
prisoned St. Peter, in the infancy of the Church, all those 
who believed in Christ ceased not by night and day to 
make intercession to God for the shepherd of the whole 
flock. 

What was not Angela's affliction, when she learned that 
the savage German legions of Frundsperg and the unscru- 
pulous Spaniards of Leyva were led against Rome by the 
Duke of Bourbon? And what was not the bitterness, worse 



126 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

than death, which filled her soul, those of her friends, and all 
true Italians, on hearing of the sack of Rome, and the out- 
rages heaped on the Holy Father? 

Her penitential austerities were increased to what seemed 
an excessive degree during the calamitous months which be- 
held the Pontiff a prisoner in the castle S. Angelo, his soul 
tortured by the spectacle of the sufferings he could neither 
prevent nor alleviate, and equally humbled at seeing the 
savage invaders abetted by an auxiliary Italian force, led 
into Rome by one of Rome's chief dignitaries, and by the 
hypocrisy of the Spanish monarch, who caused his court to 
go in mourning for the misfortunes of the Holy Father 
while imposing the most oppressive conditions for his ransom. 

Can we wonder that while the civilized world stood 
amazed and shame-faced at learning of such barbarities per- 
petrated in the capital of Christendom, that all good 
Christians should have covered themselves with sack-cloth 
and ashes, weeping for the sins that deserved such punish- 
ment, and looking with fearful eyes into the dark and angry 
future? 

Even then Angela's health began to be seriously threatened, 
and her friends began to remonstrate w^th her, and to urge 
her to moderate what they deemed to be unwise if not sinful 
excesses. In truth, however, it w^as Angela's heart which 
suffered most, not her body. Loving the Church of Christ, 
as she did, with a love scarcely to be distinguished in degree 
from that which consumed her for Christ Himself, — it was 
impossible that the indignities heaped upon Christ's Vicar, 
and the unparalleled atrocities inflicted on all classes in the 
Eternal City, should not crush a heart so tender, so true, so 
faithful as Angela's. She would not, nevertheless, allow any 
one to express for her own sufferings or health anything ap- 
p.roachLng to sympathy. More than ever she sought all op- 



AND THE URSULINE8, 127 

portiinities to be helpful to those around her. And, in truth, 
Brescia, desolated, distressed, and threatened as she was, 
afforded ample scope to the good Sister's indefatigable zeal. 
Ever since her return from Palestine, she was sought after, not 
only by the poor and sick, but more particularly by persons of 
the upper classes who needed consolation in their sufferings, 
or light in their spiritual difficulties. Nobles and plebeians, 
priests and laymen flocked to her for counsel and guidance. 
For, — often as we have spoken of the charm of her modest and 
gracious presence, and of the exquisite tact with which she 
suited her conversation to the quality, disposition, and need 
of those who sought her, — we are bound to say, after a careful 
perusal of her biographers that we have not given the reader 
any adeqaate conception of the wide and powerful influence 
exercised by her personal intercourse, — by her words even 
as much as by her saintly examples. Further on we shall 
Bpeak more at length of the reforms which that influence 
effected in the private and public manners of the Brescians; — 
we can mention even here that the spell which she exercised 
on men's minds and hearts was felt even by the great artists 
of Brescia and its neighborhood.^ 



1 We know,— we all know,— how much such painters as Titian and Tintoretto, 
Venetians both of them, have been exalted by John Ruskin, and bepraised by the second 
and third-hand critics who admire and imitate Ruskin. There are, however, at least 
three painters of the Venetian school far more deserving of the admiration and respect 
of all true lovers of art than either of these two great artists,— for great they assuredly 
are in many respects. Of these three the two brothers Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,— 
we do not wish to say more here than that they were truly Christian artists, and are 
likely to grow in reputation as the enlightened knowledge of art increases. But they 
were born nearer to Venice than the third, — who is a native of Brescia, a contemporary 
of St. Angela, and who labored in his native city beneath her eyes, and feeling the full 
influence of her teaching and examples. 

This is Alessandro Bon\icino,— called H Moretto (1500-1547), who died in the very 
springtide of his fame, and while all men were looking up to him as the successor of the 
Bellinis, destined to outstrip them in the loftiest qualities of the Christian painter. " He 
has," says Kiigler, " a style of his owti. He adhered at first closely to Titian's manner, 
but afterwards adopted much of the Roman school, and by this means formed a mode of 



128 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

One notable instance of the veneration in which she 
was held by the most exalted personages, and of the trust 
reposed in her extraordinary wisdom, relates to the last 
Duke of Milan, the ill-starred Francesco (Sf orza) II. During 
the irresistible ascendency of the Spanish power in Upper 
Italy, from 1525 to 1530, the Duke of Milan, who had been 
induced to side against the Imperialists, was exiled from his 
states. In 1528 he found a temporary refuge in Brescia, 
which was then held by the Venetians; and, impelled by 
some trouble of conscience, he wished to consult Angela. 
From the convent of the Hermits of St. Barnabas, where he 
had taken up his abode, he sent a respectful message to her 
begging her to visit him. She had too sincere a respect for 
his misfortunes as well as for his high rank, to hesitate a mo- 
ment. It became evident to Angela, from the very beginning 
of her interview, that she had been sought for, not through 
any motive of worldly curiosity, but through the far higher 
one of obtaining spiritual consolation and guidance. The 
prince spoke of the disasters which had fallen upon his peo- 
ple and himself, as of a chastisement merited by the ingrati- 
tude of both toward God's most liberal Providence and in- 
timated the resolution to consult principally the religious 
welfare of his subjects, whenever it pleased that same Provi- 
dence to restore him to his capital. Angela's modest and 
well-timed answer spoke of the great spiritual profit to be 
derived from suffering and adversity, of the sweet peace 
which resignation to the Divine Will and a loving accept- 



representation distinguished for a simple dignity, and tranquil grace and stateliness, 
which occasionally developed itself in compositions of the very highest character. In 
Buch cases he e\inces so much beauty and purity in his motives, and so much nobility 
and sentiment in his characters, that it is unaccountable how this master should, till 
within the last few years, have obtained little more than a local celebrity. . . . Moretto 
was distinguished by a childlike piety: when painting the Holy Virgin, he is said to 
have prepared himself by prayer and fasting." 



AND THE URSULINES, 129 

ance of the ills which befall even the best, with such fervent 
and touching eloquence, that her listener was deeply moved. 
There is such a power in the words of a saint! 

From the account given by F. Salvatori, one would be 
led to believe that Francesco had opened his whole soul 
to his venerable visitor, laying bare before her whatever 
troubled his conscience, and requesting her advice as to his 
future conduct. At any rate, " he besought her to become 
his spiritual adviser, and to be his own protectress and the 
intercessor for his afflicted people near the Divine Majesty. 
Angela was filled with confusion at this request, and pro- 
tested that she was only a poor sinner who could have no 
power with the most holy God. But the unfortunate sov- 
ereign renewed his importunity with such manifest fervor, 
that the good Sister was perforce obliged to promise that 
she would exert in his favor and that of his subjects all the 
influence she might have with the court of Heaven. And 
leaving him somewhat consoled, she withdrew." ^ 

Brescia itself soon became an insecure abode for its own 
inhabitants, as well as for refugees. It was too near the 
valley of the Etsch (Adige) and Stelvio pass, the great high- 
way by which the German Emperor kept pouring his troops 
into Lombard y and Venetia. The remnants of Frundsperg's 
sacrilegious bands had returned to their native country with 
spoils so rich, that others were easily found to replace them 
on Italian battle-fields. The French monarch, on the other 
hand, was, at the very least, as unscrupulous as his imperial 
antagonist, and just as regardless of all the most sacred 
rights of their common religion. In the autumn and winter 
of 1528 all Upper Italy became filled with the armies of 
these two unchristian sovereigns, — armies all the more 



1 Salvatori, p. 38. 



130 ^^- ANGELA MEBICl 

dreaded by the wi'etched jDopulations of city and country 
alike, that the treasury of both King and Emperor were 
absolutely empty, and their soldiers were only kept steady 
in the service by the unrestrained liberty of pillage and 
rapine. Under these circumstances Angela had no choice 
but to take refuge in Cremona, whither she was urged to go 
in all haste by her dearest and best friends. Among these 
were Augustine Gallo and Hippolyta, his widowed sister, 
both belonging to the old Brescian nobility, both as dis- 
tinguished for their piety as for their rank, and who looked 
up to Angela as to one who was the living temple of the 
Spirit of God. Both became also instrumental in for- 
warding the foundation of our Saint's intended society, as 
we shall see. So they now besought her to fly with them 
before the advancing Imperialists had reached the immediate 
neighborhood of Brescia. She could not resist either their 
entreaties or the reasons with which they supported them, 
and, in September, 1529, she set out with Augustine Gallo 
and his sister, Jerome Patengoli and his wife, and our old 
acquaintance Romani. She was, however, the guest of 
Augustine Gallo, during the whole time of her stay in 
Cremona, where they took up their lodging in the contrada 
or street of S. Vittore. 

This was the culminating point in the life of Sister Angela. 
Slowly the fame of her holiness, her unbounded charity, and 
her supernatural wisdom had spread from Desenzano to 
Brescia and Venice, to Palestine and to Rome. Her name 
and the praise of all her gentle virtues and great qualities 
were on the lips of the laboring and suffering poor; they 
were still more so on those of the wealthy and noble, of 
the most learned and most exalted in the Church and State. 
Duke Francesco Sforza, while still amid his court in Milan, 
had learned to revere her name from the most influential 



AND THE URSULINES. 131 

personages in his own dominions. His brief intercourse 
with her in Brescia had produced on the exiled sovereign 
an impression which influenced his aims, his sentiments, 
the whole of his private and public conduct ever altjrward. 
In Cremona, he was again to be brought into contact with 
the lowly daughter of St. Francis, and he was anxious not 
only to profit himself by this providential nearness to one of 
God's living saints, but to make every one of the nobles 
who had followed him thither become for Sister Angela a 
special object of interest. 

So, while the furious conflict between the hostile armies 
of Francis I. and Charles V. grew hourly fiercer around the 
walls of the ancient Celtic city,^ and men's souls despaired 
more and more deeply of ever seeing their native land freed 
from the baneful presence of the invader, — Angela was 
enabled to open a school of spirtuality and practical holiness 
for the benefit of the crowd of noble exiles who had taken 
refuge there. Augustine Gallo, who was the daily and 
hourly witness of all her actions, has testified that from 
earliest morning till night, his door was continually beseiged 
by persons of every class, impelled by the needs of their own 
souls to seek the help of the retiring and ever-humble woman. 
The most eminent members of the regular and secular clergy 
were to be seen among those who consulted the unlearned 
and modest Tertiary on the matters relating to their own 
conscience, or on the most profound difiiculties of Scripture 
and theology. Men who had been for many years the spiritual 
guides of others were known to treasure as practical rules 
of perfection, — precious beyond all price, — the simple advice 



1 Cremona,— like Brescia and Verona, — was founded by the Celtic tribes who were in 
possession of all Northern Italy long before Rome came into existence. In the year 
219 before Christ, it was made a Roman colony, and thenceforward its name became 
conspicuous in all the wars and revolutions of which Italy was the theatre. 



132 ST. ANGELA MEBIC% 

of this poor, timid, shrinking girl, in whose every word there 
seemed to burn and shine the heavenly fire of charity and 
the light of the Holy Spirit. From Milan itself, sorely beset 
as it was by foreign armies, and from every part of its ter- 
ritory, people soon came thronging in to see one whose whole 
life was the " Following of Christ" in practice, and whose 
very appearance was the most eloquent of sermons. 

The amount of good effected in the souls and lives of men 
by Angela's brief sojourn in Cremona was incredible. Sin- 
ners could not approach one so pure, so self-sacrificing, so far 
above the pride, the sensuality, the manifold self-seeking of 
the worldly crowd, without being touched by the light which 
revealed the hideousness of their own conduct while it showed 
so evidently the beauty of holiness. Good men were im- 
pelled to be better. Even the most generously devoted to 
the divine service, felt, as they looked upon her pale and 
radiant features and listened to her glowing words, — that 
they must strive to attain to that supreme degree of gener- 
osity, which refuses nothing that the Crucified demands, and 
is only satisfied in resembling Him in the extremity of His 
self-abasement. 

It was one of God's greatest mercies to Italy, in that dread- 
ful age of violence, lawlessness, and sacrilege, — that such 
souls as Angela were placed on high before the eyes of the 
warring, distracted, and despairing multitudes, to force men 
to see that God had not yet forsaken a guilty land, and that 
the blessed tree of Religion,-— sadly scarred and shattered as 
trunk and branches were by the terrific storms which pre- 
vailed,— still bore the loveliest blossoms and the most per- 
fect fruits of holiness. 

Even in the year 1529 Cremona was overflowing with the 
rich intellectual life which the church had been sedulously 
fostering for so many ages. A whole school pf jli^strious 



AND THE UR8ULINES. 133 

painters, — for instance, — natives, all of them, of the city 
itself, were covering the forty-five churches of Cremona, as 
well as her monasteries, her palaces and municipal edifices, 
with paintings which are the admiration of artists in our own 
day.' We have no authentic record of the influence which 
Ano-ela may have exercised on the minds and lives of these 
great Christian artists. But the traveler who in our times, 
after admiring the works of II Moretto in Brescia, passes on 
to Cremona and pauses in wonder before its wealth of paint- 
ings, cannot help tracing to the same source the influences 
which guided the hands and mspired the souls of the contem- 
porary painters of both cities. So Religion is ever the 
parent of holiness, just as holiness is the creator of all that 
is beautiful in life. 

And what would have become of that land of Italy, so privi- 
leged in its natural and supernatural aspect, — amid the inevit- 
able ruin and decay consequent upon i half-century of inces- 
sant warfare and the manifold disorders that war begets inside 
and outside every Christian home, — even the home of the 
cloister? What fate must befall us here, in this New World, 
in a land where we are free to create all that is best in pri- 
vate or public life and the institutions which express that 



^The three brothers Giulio, Antonio, and Vincenzio Campi were natives of Cremona^ 
as well as their cousin Bernardino. They, together with two other native artists, 
Boccaccio Boccaccino and Camillo Boccaccino,were contemporaries, la boring with a gen- 
erous rivahy to make the city as beautiful as Milan, or ]!ilantua, or Verona. The cele- 
brated Bishop-Poet, Mario Girolamo Vida, was prior of the monastery of Canons of St. 
John Lateran near the church of St. Margherita, while Giulio Campi was painting there. 
So, sheltered beneath the wings of Religion, the Arts labored unceasingly to create mas- 
ter-pieces, while war in all its horrors was desolating the land. This was that same 
age when 

" A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung: 

Immortal Vida, on whose honored brow 

The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow: 

Cremona now shall ever boast thy name 

As next in place to Mantua, next in fame." — Pope. 



134 ST, ANGELA MEBICI, 

life, had we not in our midst holiness in the cloister and holi- 
ness at the family hearth, — keeping ever before the minds of 
young and old the highest models of moral heroism, while 
freedom all around us seems to become only the liberty t<> 
degenerate and degrade? 

Holy souls,living in the silence and obscurity of their homes, 
— so often the poorest homes! — or amid the glare of pub- 
lic station, — are the germ- centres of that true life with which 
the All-wise God renovates the face of the earth after its 
longest wintry periods of desolation and seeming death. 
This thought consoles the Christian heart in the deep gloom 
which has settled in this nineteenth century over the face of 
long-tried Italy, — over France also, and over Spain, the once 
fertile nursery of saints and heroes. 

The year 1529 was one of the saddest years which had 
ever dawned upon Italy. The straits to which the Holy 
See was reduced in its vain efforts to turn away the tide of 
devastating war from the Peninsula, and to bring about 
peace between the two great rival sovereigns, — were most 
deplorable. As we have already said, Angela, now in her 
fifty-fifth year, believed herself bound, in common with all 
good Christians, to appease the divine anger by fervent 
prayers and penitential austerities. Before leaving Brescia 
she had been most urgent in persuading her friends and ac- 
quaintances to join her in thus pleading with the Divine 
Majesty for the afflicted Church, and had increased to an ex- 
treme degree her long fasts and other self-chastisements. 
On her arrival m Cremona there was a visible alteration in 
her health. She did not, however, seem to heed it or even 
to be conscious of it, so great was her desire to enlist all 
who came to her in this union of prayers for the peace of 
Christendom, and so intense her zeal in promoting on every 
occasion purity and holiness of life in all who sought her in- 



AND THE URSULINE8. I35 

tercourse. Her wasted frame seemed to be consumed by 
the interior fire of love for God and for all His best in- 
terests. 

At length, while all Cremona was loudest in her praise, and 
all classes of its citizens were under the spell of her elo- 
quence and examples, her strength gave way altogether, and 
she was brought to death's door. The progress of the 
fever was so rapid, that the physicians pronounced her case 
hopeless. Jerome Patengoli, her oldest friend among those 
who now were most devoted to her, took on himself to ap- 
prize her of her danger. She was prepared for it. Her poor 
opinion of her own worth and ability caused her to think 
that she was not a fit instrument for the work appointed to 
be done in Brescia. At the same time, the prospect of ap- 
proaching death and of a speedy union with Him who was 
her sole absorbing love, filled her with unspeakable joy. 

The sick-room presented a most touching scene. Augustine 
Gallo and his sister, Patengoli and his wife, Antonio del 
Romani, the generous follower and guardian of Angela in 
her travels and charitable labors, together with the elite of 
the Cremona and Milanese nobility, flocked in alarm about 
what they considered to be the death-bed of the saint. 
She could not bear to see their tears or to listen to their 
regrets. Sitting upright on her poor couch, her face all radiant 
with an unearthly light, and her tongue touched with a 
seraphic fire, she discoursed to her assembled friends on the 
bliss of that eternal life into which she was about to enter. 
As if she already stood beneath the portals of the Everlast- 
ing City on high, and beheld all its glory with unveiled eyes, 
she described its citizens and its joys with a such a rapt elo 
quence, that all who heard her, — as they afterwards solemnly 
testified, — were carried beyond themselves with wonder and 
delight. It seemed to them that they were listening to one 



136 'ST. ANGELA MERICL 

of the Seraphim sent to entertain them on the incomparable 

felicity of the Eternal Home.^ 

This extr'aordinar} effort and the ecstatic joy with which 
the sufferer's soul overflowed, brought the fever to a crisis. 
No sooner had she done speaking than a change for the 
better was perceptible. Indeed, — so Father Salvat ri re- 
marks, — from that moment she appears to have been per- 
fectly cured. If this sudden change added greatly to the 
joy and astonishment of her friends, it was to Angela her- 
self only a subject of deep regret. She too had wished with 
St. Paul to be released from the body and at rest with 
Christ, She had already entered into the shadow of that 
ineffable and everlasting peace. And now she must again 
take up the burden of this life's cares! To her friend 
Patengoli, who seems to have withdrawn from the sick-room 
after discharging his painful message, she said, when he 
returned, that he surely meant to amuse himself in telling 
her she was going to die. But he called the physicians to 
support his assertion. And so Angela had nothing for it, but to 
resign herself, declaring that this new lease of life was given 
her in punishment for her sins. 

All this had occurred during the autumn of 1529. Mean- 
while, to all human forecast, the dreadful condition of 
Italian affairs v^as daily growing worse and worse, without, 
apparently, any hope of a cessation of these intolerable evils. 
Angela's sudden and almost miraculous recovery happened 
at the moment when Charles V. was in Piacenza concentrat- 
ing the entire available resources of his army and his diplo- 
macy in a final effort to crush the French power in Italy and 
to deal the Italian allies of Francis I., — the Pope among 
them, — a blow so terrible, that they must accept the im- 
perial domination as the inevitable decree of fate. 

1 Salvatori, p. 40. 



AND THE URSULINES. 137 

Terror and despair seemed to possess even the most stout- 
hearted. Angela deemed this the proper time to exhort all 
those around her to assail the Divine Mercy by solemn sup- 
plications and pilgrimages to the most revered sanctuaries of 
Upper Italy. Among these was the Sacred Hill, near 
Varallo, in the province of IsTovara, and not far from the 
beautiful lake of Orta. Fifty chapels stationed at intervals 
along the hillside, and filled with life-like groups of statuary 
and fresco-paintings, represented the principal events in the 
life of our Saviour, especially the sufferings of His most bit- 
ter Passion. To all who visited this place the Sovereign 
Pontiffs had granted the same spiritual benefits attached to 
the pilgrimage of Jerusalem, — an inestimable benefit to the 
surrounding populations, who loved to throng to the hal- 
lowed spot, and learn as from the most eloquent pages of 
an ever-open book which all could read and understand, — 
the divine lessons taught by the Eternal Love incarnate. 

Our old acquaintance Antonio dei Romani became also on 
this occasion the guide of Angela and her fellow-pilgrims. 
Passing by Crema and Lodi, they stopped at Loncino 
to visit the holy Dominican Nun, the Blessed Stefana dei 
Quinzani, who governed the monastery of St. Paul, which 
she had founded in that city. Angela had seen this 
saintly woman more than once; but she was at the present 
time, more than ever desirous to consult her, not only about 
her own spiritual advancement, but about the first practical 
steps to be taken toward establishing her contemplated 
society. What advice Angela received from her holy friend, 
has not been put on record. But in Varallo our saint ap- 
peared to enjoy over again the bitter sweet ecstacies of her 
visit to the holy places of Palestine. As if she was treading 
for a second time on the soil made sacred by the blood of 
the Redeemer, and assisting at the consummation of His labor 



138 ^T. ANGELA MEBICL 

of love on Calvary, she poured forth her whole soul in tears 
and ardent supplications, beseeching Him to give at length 
peace to Italy and to His Church. Her companions emulated 
her piety and patriotism, moved most powerfully by her 
example as well as by the eloquence of the place. 

There is every reason to believe that our Lord was pleased 
to make known to His faithful handmaid that He had heard 
her prayers. For she went away from Varallo with a radiant 
countenance, a more buoyant step, and a more cheerful 
manner, — telling her companions and all who met her to re- 
joice, — that the Divine Goodness would soon give peace and 
rest to Italy. 

And so it befell; for ere the winter had begun, there 
came glad rumors of a suspension of hostilities. And then 
all heard that Margaret of Austria and the mother of the 
French King had taken it on themselves to plead with their 
royal kinsfolk the cause of humanity and Christendom, and 
had concluded a treaty of pacification. 

So Angela could go back to Cremona with a lighter heart, 
and pulses that beat more joyously. Brescia could now re- 
ceive her in security, and allow her to consummate what had 
been the purpose of her entire existence. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FOUNDATIONS LAID AT LAST, 

The peace which Clement VII. accepted with all its in- 
tolerable conditions, meant only servitude for all Italy as well 
as servitude for the Church. It was imposed by dire necessity, 
and made all the more bitter and humiliating to the Pontiff 
and to every true Italian, that Charles V. insisted on receiv- 
ing, in the first months of 1530, the imperial crown from the 
hands of Clement himself. It required a superhuman degree 
of magnanimity to comply with the demand of the pitiless and 
conscienceless autocrat. But, for the first time since the 
Papacy had created the glorious unity of Western Christen- 
dom, a freak of ill-fortune had made a King of Spain the 
lord paramount of continental Europe, while not one single 
sovereign was able or willing to oppose the arbitrary will of 
him who claimed the crown of Charlemagne only to undo the 
work of that heroic anti most Christian ruler. ^ 

While Clement YII., therefore, was preparing, in the bit- 
terness of his soul, to crown the dark and hypocritical con- 
queror in Bologna, Angela Merici and her friends returned to 



1 It is but a very small consolation to the reader of history to learn that Charles 
V. ended his life in the same melancholy madness which had fallen on his mother, 
Joanna. The fits of remorse and wild asceticism which characterized his conduct in the 
monastery of St. Justo, may well have been prompted by the remembrance of such 
sacrileges as the sack of Rome. 

139 



140 ST. ANGELA MERIGl 

Brescia, grateful that even a short breathing space was given 
to their grievously oppressed and long suffering country. 

During her late stay in Brescia, she had been the guest of 
Antonio dei Romani, alternately perhaps, with Augustine 
Gallo. Now that she was resolved to give effect to her 
purpose of founding a religious society, she desired to have 
some little dwelling-house of her own, no matter how poor, 
in which she might be free to live with one or more com- 
panions, and to receive the visits of all who might have re- 
course to her for instruction and guidance. So, after yielding 
to the earnest entreaties of Gallo and his sister, and enjoying 
their hospitality for a short time, she made her abode in a 
poor house near the church of St. Barnabas. 

She felt impelled by an interior voice to begin without delay 
to find companions for her great Avork. But the diffidence 
and fears begotten of her extreme humility made her still 
hesitate. She was unwilling to believe that one so weak and 
unworthy in every way as she deemed herself to be, could 
have been selected by the Divine Majesty for an undertaking 
of such importance. And so her dread of being a prey to 
some delusion, or of yielding to some hidden motive of pride 
and presumption, filled her with agony, whenever the thought 
of creating a congregation of religious women came before 
her in a practical shape. 

Now it so happened, that while she had been deliberating 
whether she should go to Cremona with her friends and pro- 
tectors, or stay in Brescia during the advance of the Imper- 
ialist forces, she had a dream which made a deep impression 
on her. 

She beheld in her sleep the holy Yirgin-Martyr of Cologne, 
St. Ursula, who exhorted her to beoin at once to establish 
the society foreshown to her in Desenzano, and reproved her 
for her unwarrantable delays. This, as it would appear, was 



AND THE UBSULINE8. 141 

not the first time that St. Ursula had appeared to her, as we 
shall see further on And yet, though everything was in 
the most frightful state of commotion in Upper Italy during 
the summer and autumn of 1529, and though Angela did but 
yield to the counsels and solicitations of her wisest and best 
friends in forsaking Brescia for a time, — it afterward ap- 
peared evident that she might have safely remained in the 
threatened city, and begun at once the labor of laying the 
foundations of her long-meditated edifice. For it is now 
known that the first steps toward a reconciliation between the 
Pope and the Emperor took place duVing the month of June, 
while the treaty of peace between Charles and Francis was 
agreed upon almost at the time Angela was on her way to 
Cremona. To be sure, it was not to the advantage of either 
the French or the Imperialist commanders that the tidings 
of such peace or conciliation should be spread abroad. 
Neither generals nor soldiers hrd b^en paid for a long time, 
and they were allowed to pay themselves by plundering, 
each in their turn, the unfortunate Italians; and so, the 
armies continued, if not to fight, at least to pillage and de- 
vastate, for months after their respective sovereigns had 
made peace. 

If, therefore, Angela might have shown more heroic faith 
in Providence,.by heeding the words of warning.and exhort- 
ation sent to her in this dream or vision, she on the other 
hand, would feel justified in listening to the counsels of those 
who bade her to fly from Brescia, and bide a more peaceful 
and propitious season for the beginning she contem- 
plated. 

Be that as it may, certain it is, that as soon as she had 
taken up her abode near the Church of St. Barnabas, she 
deemed it prudent to lay her intention before F. Serafino 
da Bologna, a member of the Augustinian Congregation, 



143 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

Canons Regular of St. Jolin Lateran,' who were at that 
time attached to the Venerable Church of S. Afra in that 
city. Father Serafino was himself a man not only of great 
learning and piety, but one of excessive prudence. For, 
knowing Angela, as he did, he thought it wise to submit one 
of her ripe age, judgment, and experience, to a long course 
of trials and delays. He bade her increase her fervent 
prayers, her vigils, and austerities, in order to obtain greater 
light from on high, and then, satisfied that his saintly peni- 
tent was not laboring under any spiritual illusion, he ex- 
horted her to go on with what, he doubted not, was the work 
of God. 

Her long sojourn in Brescia had made Angela thoroughly 
acquainted with all the persons of her own sex throughout 
the city. She had watched the growth, from childhood to 
womanhood, of most of its maidens, and hacJ been instru- 
mental in forming to all the practices of Christian life the 
souls of very many of them, — perhaps of most of them. They 



J The establishment at St. John Lateran in Rome, of a body of priests living in 
community under the Rule of St. Augustine, took place, according to Caesar 
Franciotti, under Pope St. Leo the Great, between the years 440 and 457. But Panvinio, 
in his history of the Lateran Basilica, says that this establishment was made in 495 
by Pope St. Gelasius, who was himself a disciple of St. Augustine. These were the 
^rst ^' Canons Regular of St. John Lateran." A branch establishment bearing the 
fiame title was made about the same time in Lucca, by St. Frigidian, the first bishop 
and apostle of that city, an Irishman, sent thither by the same Pope. The Roman es- 
tablishment was broken up by Pope Boniface YIII. (1294-1303) after eight centuries of 
existence, and a body of secular priests placed in the monastery and at the head of 
the world-famed school of St. John Lateran. They too bore the title of their prede- 
cessors without claiming to follow the Rule of St. Augustine. The expelled monks, 
however, did not give up their rule, or their name, or their mode of living. For we 
find their successors and brethren living not only in Lucca but in Brescia during 
the 15th and 16th centuries. Pope Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), decreed that the monks 
beariug the title of " Canons Regular of St. John Lateran," although dispossessed of 
their monastery and church in Rome, should retain their ancient denomination and 
form one of the same congregation or order. They take precedence of all other Reg- 
r^ar Orders. It is a house of this same Congregation that St. Angela found in Brescia, 
and to which F. Serafino da Bologna belonged. 



AKD THE UBSULINES. 143 

all looked up to her as their model and guide in all that per- 
tained to true womanly virtue. So, — when the proper time 
came, she could choose knowingly from among the very 
flower of the flock. 

History has preserved the name of the first twelve maiden 
associates of Angela Merici ; — they are: Simona Borni, 
Catherine and Dominica Dolce, sisters, Dorosilla Zinelli, 
Pellegrina Casali, Clara Gaffuri, Paula and Laura Peschieri, 
also sisters, Barbara Fontana, Clara Martinengo, Margaret 
dell'Olmo, and Maria Bartolletti. 

Of these, Barbara Fontana became Angela's inseparable 
companion, sharing thenceforward with the latter, all the 
poverty and privations of what they called their home, — 
the scanty portion of fare begged from door to door and not 
doled out to the poor of Christ, the cold hearth on which a 
fire never glowed, the hard bench on which they both sat by 
day reading to each other some holy book during the inter- 
vals of their long prayers, and on which, sitting upright 
with their backs to the wall, they allowed exhausted nature 
to snatch the only brief needful repose which they ever en- 
joyed, — and, with these exercises of prayer and praise, the 
rapturous fervor of spirit known only to those who take up 
their cross and follow Christ, and the overflowing consola- 
tions of His sweetness who is never outdone in generosity. 

The remaining eleven continued to live with their parents, 
aiding these in the performance of their household duties, 
edifying all who beheld them by their active but un- 
obtrusive piety. Two things distinguished every member of 
the little band; like their model and guide, Sister Angela, 
they made open profession of that virginal life, which Christ 
and His Mother had first honored, and which had ever after 
them continued to be in the Church the source of so many 
divine virtues and such fruitful self-sacrifice; and, besides, 



144 ST. ANGELA MERIGI, 

they sought every opportunity to teach and train the young, 
and to minister to the suffering and the needy. 

Angela associated them to all her own devotional exercises, 
carefully forming their conscience, grounding them thor- 
oughly in the principles and practice of that high spirituality 
which was the distinctive feature of her own character. 
Training them to emulate her own extreme poverty and serif - 
crucifixion, she made them understand that bodily austerity 
and the most exalted purity of soul only prepared the Chris- 
tian to approach the Divine Majesty in oral or mental prayer, 
while mental prayer itself was the furnace in which the soul 
was inflamed with supernatural charity toward God and the 
neighbor. 

Self-denial and self-sacrifice, while seeking in all things the 
honor of that Adorable Majesty and His best interests in the 
education of youth and the salvation of souls, — such was the 
grand aim which she set before them, and which she pursued 
herself with a heroic single-mindedness beyond all praise. 
She was herself distinguished by a singular tact and a surety 
of judgment, ripened into preternatural wisdom by her con- 
stant intercourse with God, and the purity of purpose that 
guided her in all her actions. She prized exceedingly in those 
who sought to become her associates, these same sterling quali- 
ties of uprightness of purpose, excellence of judgment, 
natural sagacity and tact in dealing with others. She had 
no patience with pious fools. Her companions were destined 
to be apostles, who were to learn to make themselves all 
things to all men in order to win all souls to the divine ser- 
vice. This required practical wisdom and a sure judgment, 
the magnaminity which no trial and difficulty could appal, 
and that humility which leaves self in the hands of God as a 
passive and docile instrument for every one of His uses. 

It was this absolute f orgetf ulness of self, united to a won- 



AND THE URSULINES, I45 

derful appreciation of the needs of the world around them, 
that earned for Sister Angela and her early associates the 
sweet name by which they were at first popularly known in 
Upper Italy, — " the Humble or Little Sisters," Demisse, 

No sooner, therefore, had Angela made proof of the solid 
virtue and generous self-sacrificing humility of these her 
twelve apostles, than she resolved to go with them on a pil- 
grimage to the Holy Hill of Varallo, where she had received 
so much light and consolation in the autumn of 1529. It 
was now August, 1532; and as she could not lead her band of 
devoted maidens to Jerusalem, to make together their act of 
consecration to the Crucified on the very spot hallowed by 
His blood, she felt that the next best thing to do was to offer 
themselves to Him at Varallo, where the Christian heart of 
Italy had peopled the mountain side and summit with the 
most life-like representations of Christ's mfinite love. 

In this second visit to Varallo, Angela had also for her 
fellow-travellers and protectors her dear friends Augustine 
and Hippolyta Gallo. These noble personages looked upon 
Angela's religious family as their own, encouraging and fos- 
tering its timid beginnings by their devotion and generosity. 
In truth all that was noblest and best in Brescia shared the 
sentiments of Gallo and his sister toward the infant society. 
The pilgrims, who had found the chapels on the Holy Hill in 
an incomplete or ruinous condition three years before, were 
now delighted to see them repaired and completed. With 
so much ardor did the people and the artists who shared 
and interpreted their lively faith vie with each other in 
bringing to perfection one of the most glorious creations of 
Christian art! 

Angela, remembering Jerusalem and Bethlehem the while, 
and knowing well that but few hours were left her of day- 
light to rear from its foundations the spiritual edifice, which 



146 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

was to be her life-work, besought the Divine Goodness with 
renewed fervor to grant herself an increase of light and 
energy with an increase in all holiness, and to shed on her 
companions the fulness of His Spirit. 

From Varallo the little band went to Milan to venerate 
the relics of our Lord's passion so carefully treasured there. 
There again Angela was honored by a visit from the Duke, 
Francis II. He had asked her, while an exile and a fugitive, 
to act as a parent toward him, to counsel and direct him in 
all that pertained to his conscience. The unhappy prince 
appeared to have followed scrupulously, so far as the tyran- 
nical force of adverse circumstances would permit him, the 
advice of the holy woman. He showed himself during the 
few remaining years of his life, a father to his people and 
an exemplary Christian in his private conduct. He thereby 
endeavored to repair the oppressive measures which had 
made the beginning of his reign so odious. Nor was the Duke 
satisfied with visiting Angela at her lowly lodgings in the 
city; he made all his courtiers pay her every possible mark 
of jespect. Indeed all Milan was moved by the presence of 
the Saint; and as it had happened to her in Venice, on her 
arrival from the Holy Land, so now in the capital of 
Lombardy, — the Duke, the nobility, and the burgesses be- 
seiged her with prayers to fix her abode in their midst. 

To their entreaties she replied with a gentle but firm de- 
cision that she owed to God and to the generous citizens of 
Brescia to spend the remainder of her life in that city. The 
Milanese, however, as we shall see, were to be rewarded in 
God's own time by the possession of one of the most blessed 
colonies of Angela Merici's daughters, — and to no one more 
than to St. Charles Borromeo, Milan's glorious archbishop, 
was the whole Order founded by the Maid of Desenzano 
more deeply indebted for its prosperity. 



Am) THE URSULINE8. I47 

No sooner had Sister Angela and her companions returned 
to Brescia, than the former found it necessary to change her 
place of abode. She wished to be near the Church of St. 
Afra,both because it was under the direction of the edifying 
Canons of St. John Lateran, of which body her spiritual 
guide, Father Serafino da Bologna, was a member, but because 
the church itself was a treasure-house filled with the relics of 
the glorious Christian martyrs of Brescia." Besides, the 
church of St. Af ra was central, and therefore of easy access to 
Angela's companions, while St. Barnabas was situated near the 
walls in an out of the way place. Then again the Canons of 
St. Afra, who celebrated the divine offices with uncommon 
regularity and splendor, pressed upon Angela's acceptance 
an apartment quite near the church, thus affording her 
every facility for gratifying her ardent piety toward the 
Most Holy Sacrament, as well as her devotion to Brescia's 
glorious martyrs. Indeed one of Angela's most distinguished 
followers in modern Italy = declares that there was a special 
providence in this change of abode, inasmuch as the Saint's 
spiritual children could only reach their mother, in her new 
resting-p lace at St. Afra, by passing over a soil impregnated 

' The church of this name which existed in the time of St. Angela, was one of the 
most ancient in Brescia. It was rebuilt about 1600 without gaining thereby in archi- 
tectural beauty The old church had been erected on the site of a temple of Saturn 
and was known at first as the Church of St. Faustinus ad Sanguinem, because, as Salva' 
ton remarks, there St. Faustinus (together with his companion, St. Jovita) and a host 
of other glorious witnesses, poured forth their blood during the early persecutions 
It was also called the "Cemetery of St. Latinus," probably because this saint the 
fourth bishop of Brescia, caused the remains of all these holy martyrs to be collected 
together and entombed there, and chose the place also as that of his o«-n burial The 
restored Church of St. Afra, as it is at present, in spite of Its architectural blemishes 
contains remarkable works of art,-frescoes by Girolamo Eossi, a native of the city 
and paintings by the younger Palma, Bassano, Tintoretto, Titian, and Paul Veronese.' 

2 The Conntess E. Girelli, nta di S. Angela Mend, Fergine Sresciana, e del suo 
tanto instUuio, Brescia, 1571. This lady has devoted her life to the establishment of 
nncloistered TJrsnline Communities according to the primitive plan of St. Angela and 
uer immediate companions. 



148 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

with the blood of martyrs. The very atmosphere of the 
place inspired with the desire of self-immolation these gen- 
erous maidens, who were contemplating a manner of life 
that was in its^elf a perpetual martyrdom. 

Even in our own days, in spite of the anti-christian spirit 
from which Brescia and its territory have been influenced 
not a little, this poor room in which Angela dwelt till her 
death with Barbara Fontana, is a holy spot to which pilgrims 
from far and near are ever wont to resort. On the place 
where the Saint breathed her last stands a little altar. There, 
on the 2'7th of January, every year, the Holy Sacrifice is 
offered up; and there, too, the veneration of the people 
jealously preserves and points out to the stranger-pilgrim 
the poor wooden benches used by Angela and her band of 
female apostles. On the walls are a few mediocre paintings 
which recall the principal actions of her life. But to the 
eye and heart of one who prizes true heroism for what it 
is worth, such a spot needs no ornament. Everything there 
is eloquent of the loftiest aims and the noblest deeds. The 
sweet odor of Christ clings to the room and its poor furni- 
ture, and a secret virtue goes forth from every object, lifting 
the Christian m-an or woman who kneels there above earth 
and its aspirations to God and the things of God.^ 

* The room itself is about ten feet broad, twenty-five feet long, and thirty-eight feet 
high. On a tablet in the vsall is an inscription of which the following is a translation: 

" In this poor ajmrtment lived and died the illustrious Vi7'gin, Angela Merici. From 
this place she was wont to send up toward heaven the heart-cries of her ardent charity. 
Either were wont to come, to this woman unacquainted with worldly learning, as to a 
school of heavenly doctrine, the theologians condemned to live in an age when error flooded 
the land. Here, Angela cctlling together pious maidens of her own country, built up that 
holy society which flourishes more gloriously than ever after three centuries of existence^ 
and extends throughout the Church and civil society the blessings of its labors.''' 

The Ursuline Convent of Brescia, situated at a short distance from the Church of 
St. Afra, was suppressed by a decree of the Piedmontese government in 1866. The 
nuns, however, manage to live on,— a precarious life full of dangers,— within the walls 
of their monastery, like the flowering shrubs of their native hills beneath the deep 
Bnow aad bitter cold of winter. The springtide will come for them yet I 



a:^D the URSULINE8. 149 

Meanwhile Sister Angela's throng of disciples went on in- 
creasing. Her narrow room could no longer accommodate 
them. For there it was she had to instruct them and to 
perform in common with them those sweet exercises of piety 
which are the very soul of daily Religious life. The neces- 
sity of their uniting together in these acts so essential to the 
spirit of fervor, was all the more imperious in their case, 
that they had to live during the remainder of the time 
separate in their respective homes. They came to the re- 
unions held by Angela, like famished laborers to the common 
meal, bearing with them in the spiritiml refection there 
received, the strength needful to sustain them amid their 
arduous duties in the great outside world. Angela's room 
at St. Atra was like the upper chamber in the house of Mary, 
the sister of St. Barnabas, and the mother of John Mark, after 
the ascension of our Lord. There the Apostles and disciples 
m?t to celsbrat. the divine Sacrifice, and to fill up their 
hearts with ihat heroic charity which was to inflame and to 
Changs the woWd. This was the centre from which apostolic 
2eal spread like '^ conflagration all over Palestine and Syria, 
kindling m men's souls the love of God and that of the 
brotherhood, z.^ it swept round the shores of the Mediterra- 
nean^ till it enveloped the whole of the Roman Empire in its 
course. 

From Angela's cold and narrow room beside St. Afra's, 
every soul among these pious maidens issued all aflame with 
the desire to make God known and to have Him served more 
faithfully by all whom she met with in her own home or in 
the outside world. Indeed each one of them was like a 
piece of molten metal from the furnace, placed beneath the 
paternal roof to enlighten and warm to all generous deeds 
every person who came in contact with her. How could the 
little band of Twelve, being what they were, and formed by 



150 ^^. ANGELA MEBICI, 

so admirable a mistress, not increase daily? Even so, it soon 
became imperative on Angela to find some larger place, which 
she might transform into a community-room and an oratory 
for her growing flock. 

At this juncture Providence threw in her way a noble 
widow lady, Elizabeth Prato by name, who gave up to 
the new Sisterhood a hall in one of her houses, situated on 
the Cathedral Square (Plaza del Duomo).^ Thenceforward 



1 This Oratory in the house of Elizabeth Prato has always been revered by the Ur- 
sulines as the cradle of their Order. In course of time, it changed proprietors, and was 
sadly neglected. In 1621 it was restored by the then master of the house, John 
Baptist Bianchi, and in 1672, the Italian traveller, Lombard!, visited and described 
it. There was, above the altar, a wall-painting of the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin 
and St. John standing beneath the cross, with two female saints,— probably St. Mary 
Magdalene and St. Mary Salome, The interior, just above the entrance door, w^as also 
adorned with three other frescoes bearing the date of December the 11th, 1533 On 
the side walls was represented St. Ursula, bearing a palm-branch, the Assumption of the 
B. v., St. Afra, dressed in the primitive habit of the Ursulines, exposed to the wild 
beasts in the Amphitheatre and miraculously spared by these ; St. Elizabeth of 
Hungary, habited like a Tertii-ry of St. Francis, surrounded by a number of young 
girls all in the Ursuline dress, some of them are occupied in preparing materials for 
the loom, while others are seated at table and served by St. Elizabeth. St. Paula and 
her daughter, St. Eustochium were painted as on the point of being shipwrecked. The 
Biescian martyr-brothers, St. Faustinus, a priest, and St. Jovita, a deacon, being 
special favorites of St. Angela, occupied another space on the walls. Above the door, 
on the outside of the Oratory, St. Angela herself was represented with the following 
inscription: 

Beata Angela Merici, 

BRIXIANARUM VIRGUsUM SPECULtJM IMMACULATUM, 

HUIC PRLMUM SACRAS VIRGINES SJECULARE3 

DiVINO INSTINCTU 

Sapientissime INSTITUIT, 
PkOPRI^QUE "VTRTUTIS rULGENTISSIMIS RADIIS, 

Heic sjepissime commorando, 
Illustkavit. 
CONRUEBAT nSTJURIA temporum et hominitm 

H^C SACRA ^DICULA, 

At Jo. Baptisto blancus tanto nomini de viNCTirs, 

EXSTAURAVIT. 

MDCXX. 

Blessed Angela Merici, 
Of Brescian maidens the spotless mirror, 



AND THE UR8ULINE8. 



151 



the little society began to assume a consistent shape. Al- 
though Angela's chief care seemed to be bestowed on the 
selection and training of young girls, who, free from the 
ties of earthly love, and unencumbered with the formed habits 
of a more advanced age, could give themselves wholly to the 
apostleship of education and charity, — there was another 
class of pious women whom the Foundress labored to attach 
to her order, — noble widows of spotless fame and known in- 
fluence. These were to be, in the beginning, the moderat" 
ing and protecting force in the Order. For an aggregation 
of young women bound together, principally, by the pur- 
suit of a common purpose, and living in their own families 
surrounded by the ordinary seductions and distractions of 
the world, there was need of the eye, the hand, and the 
heart of motherly ladies whose virtues made them models 
and safe guides, and whose ripe experience and worldly 
rank gave them undisputed authority. 

In truth, when we consider attentively not only the aim 
which Angela Merici had set to herself, but the means by 
which she endeavored to reach it, — we are compelled to ask 



Here first impelled by Divine grace, 

Trained and founded, with consummate wisdom, 

A body of consecrated maidens destined to live m the woi^ld. 

And while tarrying here frequently with them, 

She enlightened them 

With the resplendent rays of her own virtue. 

This little Oratory, 

Fallen into decay by the effect of time and neglect of men, 

Was entirely restored 

By John Baptist Bianchi, the devoted servant of so great 

A saint. 

After the year 1672, the Oratory thus restored by the enlightened piety of Bianchi, 
fell into less pious hands, and became an ordinary apartment, applied to secular and 
household purposes. The wall-paintings disappeared one by one, the fresco of the 
Crucifixion having alone been spared. Even this disappeared about 1732, while the 
room was tenanted by a woman named Semenzi,who had the whole place white-washed, 
— the workmen, contrary to her instructions, bedaubing with lime the remaining fresco. 



152 ST' ANGELA MERICl 

ourselves whether the circumstances of Italian religious and 
social life were not such as to render an organization like 
that which she set on foot most timely and most needful ? 
From the mode of living pursued by Cajetan of Tiene and 
the early Theatines, by St. Philip Neri and his Oratorians, 
as well as by Angela Merici and her companions, one might 
conclude that Italy was in a fearfully disorganized condition, 
that together with the disorders begotten of awhole century 
of incessant warfare, there were other perverting influences 
actively at work, in Italian homes and Italian society, — find- 
ing their way to the minds and hearts of all classes, unset- 
tling in souls the faith which had been the guide and consol- 
ation of preceding centuries, — and disposing the men and 
women of the 16th to rebel against God, against His Church, 
and against all that had till then been held as a venerable 
authority in Christendom. 

Indeed, about this same date, 1533-34, the revolt headed 
by Martin Luther had not only separated England from the 
Holy See, arrayed the peoples and princes of Germany in 
two hostile camps, filled with bloodshed and anarchy some 
of the fairest portions of that country, but made of Switzer- 
land and France houses divided against themselves, and 
created in Upper and Central Italy many bitter elements of 
religious and political dissension. The most glorious institu- 
tions of the ages of Italian freedom, and overflowing pros- 
perity, — the monastic orders and their creations, — were 
denounced as the work of Satan and the bane of 
Christendom. That Virginal Life, which since the days 
of Christ and His Mother, had been so devoted to the 
best interests of God on earth, — the spiritual welfare and 
temporal comfort of the people, — and so marvellously fruit- 
ful in creations of holiness, beauty, enlightenment, and educa- 
tion, — was held up by unblushing apostate monks and shame- 



AJS2J THE URSULINES, I53 

less priests as contrary to the law of God and of nature. 

It became the wise providence of Him, who is ever 
watchful over His Church and her children, to call holy men 
and women to live the life of the most austere ascetics in 
the midst of the world, to raise up in the midst of cities and 
in the bosom of families, maidens consecrated to God, and 
wedded to all the sublime charities of the most fervent 
monastic orders. Have you, dear reader, ever remarked 
the wonderful art with which Nature repairs the disasters, 
and heals the wounds of the tree or the plant, and instinct- 
ively arms it with a sure defence against the sudden and 
unforeseen changes of weather and temperature? Here is 
one of those favorite flowers called hyacinths. Just as it 
was about to blossom, an accident injured the flower spike, 
so that it bent over and threatened to break. Just then one 
of the spear-like leaves turned away from its straight up- 
ward position to support, as with a parent's arm, the droop- 
ing spike and its opening flowerets. And so it continued to 
support it, till the vital sap had repaired the injury and re- 
stored the needed strength. But no sooner was the spike 
able to resume and maintain, unaided, its erect position, 
than the friendly leaflet withdrew and returned to its pre- 
vious upright form. 

We know when the bark has been torn from a portion of 
the tree-trunk, how all the currents of the vital sap hasten 
to flow to the wound and deposit the necessary fibrin, rap- 
idly covering over the raw wound, and forming a new coat- 
ing of bark to protect the injured part from the inclemency 
of the atmosphere or the inroads of hurtful insects. Is it not 
even so that Nature's hidden virtue heals the wounds in the 
human frame? But in that supernatural organism called the 
Church, the Mystic Body of Christ, informed as it ever is by 
the indwelling Creator Spirit, is there not a divine virtue 



154 ^^^ ANGELA MERICl, 

which is ever at work to repair the decay of the humaq 
and perishable elements in the immortal frame? is there 
not a hidden current of overflowing vital energy which 
an infallible instinct directs toward the part which is 
wounded or weakened in the battle with the powers of 
darkness? 

When the storm has torn from the lordly oak one of its 
branchesjwill not the tree hasten to put forth another, and 
on the same side, to enable the stately tree to maintain its 
proper balance and withstand the assaults of future tem- 
pests? How admirably are all those analogies verified in the 
life of Christ's Church during the eighteen centuries of her 
stormy existence! 

Even so, in the Italy of the early sixteenth century, when 
th3 very existence of monastic life v/as i^iperilled, when the 
Virginal Life in the cloister or in the priesthood, or even as 
it had ever been honored m the Christian family-home, was 
declared to be contrary to the revealed will of God, — the 
Church spontaneously produced such aggregations of holy 
men and women as the Society of Jesus, as the Theatines 
and Oratorians, as the Ursulines in Venetia, and the reformed 
Carmelites of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross in Spain. 
It was like armies of virginal souls preaching by the exam- 
ples of their spotless and most useful lives, the necessity and 
the divinity of the institutions which rampant heresy assailed, 
just as when a conflagration has swept over the face of a 
country destroying wheat-fields, pastures, and forests in its 
course, the ever-present and all-suflScient energy of Nature 
hastens to cover up the black ruin with her beautiful vesture 
of green grass, and flowering shrub, and shooting sapling, — 
the new life budding and blossoming fast on the footprints 
of death! 

W© can, therefore^ see, about the date of November, 1533, 



AND THE URSULINE8. 156 

Brescia, desolated by unparalleled calamities/ and still 
threatened alternately by the hostile armies of France and 
Spain, bestowing her chief care on making Religion flourish 
in her ruined churches and monasteries, in encouraging Angela 
Merici and her companions to make the most generous piety 
live once more in every home, and in placing the children of 
both sexes in the hands of such women as the early Ursu- 
lines, and such men as St. Jerome Emiliani and his as- 
sociates. 

Home-life, with its supernatural piety and virtues, with 
its Christian methods of education, and with the high and 
comforting hopes which a living faith inspires, — such was 
the pure source of a renewed national greatness that these 
devoted men and women aimed at creating or deepening in 
their native land. Brescia, — and the same can be said in a 
very great measure of the other cities of Upper Italy, — was 
at the time too poor and too uncertain of the future, to 
think of founding large and costly monastic establishments. 
And the spiritual straits were as distressing as the public and 
private poverty was great. The Spirit of God, who used 
such instruments as Angela Merici, Jerome Emiliani, and 
Cajetano de Tiene to renovate the faceof the earth, impelled 
them to work in the homes of the needy populations, to 
raise the voice of teaching in the busiest marts of commerce, 
to display the shining examples of unearthly abnegation 
along the crowded thoroughfares, — so that every current of 

1 Before tlie destruction wrought by the French in 1512, Brescia, according to a 
contemporary historian, Robert de la Mark, "was one of the most powerful, of the best 
fortified, and of the most opulent cities (republics) in all Italy. Nine millions of 
francs in money were taken away from the hapless city by its French captors,— a sum 
which was immense for the time. Indeed, we are assured by another contemporary 
historian, a Frenchman also {Eistorie composeepar le Loyal Serviteur desfaUs, gesies^ 
tmomphes et. prouesses du hon Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche le gentil Seigneur 
de Bayard), that the soldiers of Bayard and Gaston de Foy returned to France with 
such a rich booty that they abandoned the service, to live on their ill-gotten wealth. 



156 ^T. ANGELA MEBICL 

the national life might be thus purified and hallowed by their 
influence. 

In preceding ages, men and women who wished to save 
themselves from the evil examples of the half -pagan society 
amid which they were born, fled to the sandy desert or to 
the most inaccessible mountain-solitudes. At the beo^in- 
ning of the 16th century, the Divine Spirit led His apostles 
not into the wilderness, but into the very midst of the battle- 
field where good and evil were struggling for victory. 

The citizens of Brescia felt how seasonable, how provi- 
dential was the appearance in their midst, — in their homes, 
their schools, and their hospitals, — of a band of maidens 
formed on the angelic model of the Venerable Maid of 
Desenzano, and watched over and directed by matrons of 
the highest rank and the most unquestioned virtue. Clergy 
and people saw the hand of God in the beginnings of this 
Society. 

Let us now see what induced Angela to bestow on it the 
name of St. Ursula; and what were the first grand lineaments 
of the organization. 



CHAPTER Xn. 

WHY ANGELA CALLED HER SISTEEHOOD "THE COMPANY OF ST. 

UESULA." ^ 

While Angela and her twelve first companions are forming 
themselves to the practical duties of their calling by meditat- 
ing together assiduously in the Oratory of Elizabeth Prato, 
on the life of Christ and His Virgin Mother^ — it will not be 
amiss to examine what motives led the holy Foundress to 
bestow on the association created by her the denomination 
of "The company of St. Ursula." 

The popular legends recounting the romantic life of this 
holy Virgin-Martyr and her companions, vary ia many par- 
ticulars, while agreeing in the main historical facts accepted 
by the Church and embodied in her liturgy and in the au- 
thorized record of the Roman Breviary. The traditions 
differing from each other in Germany and in Italy, do not 
affect these great substantial facts relating to the existence, 
the heroic virtues, and the glorious witness of the virgin 
band. "These traditions, with their sweet devotional per- 
fume, are like the undergrowth of our southern forests, 
lovely and graceful plants that spring up beneath the shade 
of the great trees, and creep up their trunks, hanging their 
wreaths of bright foliage and brilliant flowers from every 
branch, — the most beautiful ornament of the forest, but not 

the forest itself. The heart and imagination of man, even in 

157 



158 ^^- ANGELA MEBICl 

the most cultivated societies, will produce these flowers of 
fancy, and wreathe them around his holiest beliefs." ' 

The simple facts of this history are: That about the year 
382, when Flavins Clemens Maximus, commander of the 
Roman armies in Great Britain, usurped the imperial 
title, and crossed over into Gaul, followed by an army of 
Celts from that island, he expelled from Armorica the origin- 
al inhabitants, and divided the land among his British sol- 
diers. Anxious to provide for these colonists wives of their 
own race, he obtained from Dionoc, prince of Cornwall, that 
the latter should give his daughter, Ursula, in marriage to 
Conan, the commander of the British soldiers in the imperial 
service, and send with her a sufficient number of other 
maidens to become the partners of the new lords of Armor- 
ica, thenceforward named Little Britain or Britanny. The 
vessels which contained the British princess and her maiden 
companions, were driven by a storm on the coast of Germany 
and up the Rhine. There the vessels were captured by the 
pagan inhabitants and brought to Cologne. The prize was 
a tempting one for the barbarians, who contended for their 
possession. Ursula, however, exhorted her companions to 
die rather than submit to the shameful lot which their heathen 
captors reserved for them. Their resistance caused the en- 
tire band to be massacred as well in hatred of the Christian 
faith as in the defence of their virginity. Their place of 
sepulture was shown at Cologne from the fifth century to the 
present day, — attesting that their number was considerable, 
without stating it precisely. 

The heroic manner in which these stranger maidens de- 
fended their own honor against the assaults of the rude pagan 
soldiery, and their invincible courage in bearing witness to 



1 " Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church," ch. xxiv., p. 248. 



AND THE URSULINE8. I59 

the Christian faith, rendered their name forever fanK)U'.s 
among the Germanic populations, — especially after the con- 
version of the latter to Christianity. They became the ideal 
type of Christian maidenhood, the protectors of all who 
choose to lead in the world the Virginal Life, while Ursula, 
who was their leader and instructress, was everywhere looked 
up to as the patron saint of all who devoted themselves to the 
education of young girls. 

The legends which became current about these martyrs of 
Cologne during the middle ages, related, moreover, that this 
virgin train ascended the Rhine to Basel, crossed the Alps 
by the Stelvio or the Brenner Pass, visited Venice, Verona, 
and the principal cities of Upper Italy, and after performing 
their pilgrimage to Rome returned by the same road to 
Germany. It is on their arrival at Cologne, that they are 
are made to fall into the hands of the Huns who massacre 
them. 

Thus at a very early period, the fame of these British 
Virgin -Martyrs was as popular in Upper Italy as it was along 
the banks of the Rhine. The cities of the Venetian territory, 
especially, claimed them as the special patrons of maiden- 
hood and of all institutions devoted to the training of youth. 
Hence it is that we find, in the year 1490, just when Angela 
Merici was in her sixteenth year, — the city of Venice found- 
ing an establishment for the education of female orphans, 
and bestowing on it the name of ''the School of St. Ursula," 
{Scuola di Scmt Or sold). Now it so happened that one of 
the most distinguished painters to whom the Great Republic 
gave birth, Victor Carpaccio, was called, at this same date, 
to decorate the chapel of this institution with subjects wor- 
thy of Christian Venice, and representing the history of St. 
Ursula. Alas, the school of St. Ursula has long ceased to 
be devoted to its original purpose, and, like so many other 



160 ^^' -4iV^G^^X^ MERICl 

creations of the enlightened republican piety of the Queenly 
City, it has been allowed to fall into irreparable decay. 
Still, some at least of the master-pieces of Carpaccio have 
been preserved to posterity, and are now found in the great 
museum known as the Accademia. 

If Angela, either on her passage through Venice in 1524, or 
during her stay in the city at any other period, had visited 
the school of St. Ursula, she might have seen Carpaccio's 
masterly works on the walls where he had painted them. 
The artist was, like the Brothers Bellini, inspired by a lively 
faith and a sincere piety which elevated and hallowed his 
genius. "The richness of fancy," — says Mrs. Jameson, — 
"the lively dramatic feeling, the originality and naivet6 
with which the story is told, render this series one of the most 
interesting of early Venetian art. Zanetti says that he used 
to go to the chapel of St. Ursula and conceal himself, to ob- 
serve the effects which those pictures produced on the 
minds of the people as expressed in their countenances. 'I 
myself,' he adds, 'could hardly turn away my eyes from that 
charming figure of the saint, where, asleep on her maiden 
couch, — all grace, purity, and innocence, — she seems, by the 
expression on her beautiful features to be visited by dreams 
from Paradise.'"* In truth Angela needed not to visit 
Venice or the school of St. Ursula, to become acquainted 
with the story of the Virgin -Martyr and her companions, or 
to find that story told, and well told, by loving artistic 
hands in other sanctuaries throughout Venetia and Lombardy. 

The great theological school of the Sorbonne, in Paris, had 



1 " Sacred and Legendary Art," vol. 2, p. 514. The picture mentioned by Zanetti is 
that numbered as 533 in the Accademia. It is the Dream of St. Ursula, in which she is 
bidden to visit the shrines of the holy martyrs in Rome. Those who have admired the 
exquisite grace of Raphael in one of his first paintings, " The Marriage of the Blessed 
Virgin,'' will find that he is surpassed by Carpaccio in every picture of this magnificent 
series. 



AND THE UBSULINE3. 161 

early adopted St. Ursula as the special protectress of its 
professors and students. How could Upper Italy, with its 
vivid local traditions, fail to be beforehand with the capital 
of France ? So, everywhere, the glorious Princess who shed 
her blood in Cologne, was the accepted model and protec- 
tress of all who strove to lead the Virginal Life in their own 
homes or who devoted their existence to educate children of 
their own sex. 

We can now see how natural it was for Angela Merici to 
choose St. Ursula as a patron for her Sisterhood. They were 
to live in the midst of the world, offering their examples as a 
corrective to the vices of the age, and giving their services 
to the two-fold cause of education and charity. Who could 
better plead for their interests in Heaven than the Celtic 
Princess and her sainted band of virgins? Had not Italy 
been ravaged again and again by hordes more pitiless than 
Goth, or Vandal, or Hun? Had they not still possession of 
her fairest provinces, and was not their sway paramount 
over all? 

Indeed about this same time, 1533-34, more than one 
biographer of our saint places a miraculous vision in which 
Angela beheld St. Ursula herself with her companions 
urging the immediate organization of a religious order, and 
promising the foundress their special advocacy and protec- 
tion. 

This fact, — though not vouched for by any recorded and 
authentic declaration of Angela, or of her immediate com- 
panions, seems to be indirectly attested by the artistic 
monuments left in Brescia and Desenzano by such of her 
contemporaries as II Moretto and Romanino. In their paint- 
ings Angela is represented as kneeling before Ursula, who 
presents her with a standard, while behind and around 
Ursula the host of palm-bearing virgins smile approval and 



162 ^T, ANGELA MEEICl 

encouragement. This became, throughout Italy, the re< 
ceived way in which artists transmitted to posterity Angela's 
motive in naming her order. 

Another vision occurring in this same year, and pressing 
more urgently still on Angela the formal and canonical es- 
tablishment of her society, is related by the same historians.' 
This extraordinary event, — which seems strangely at vari- 
ance with our saint's child-like obedience to the Divine Voice 
and its habitual guidance, happened in this way. One night 
while Sister Angela was occupied in her usual exercise of 
meditation, an angel suddenly stood before her in a threaten- 
ing attitude. She fell prostrate on the ground, filled with a 
terror which she could not control. Recovering from her 
fright and lifting up her eyes, she beheld our Lord Himself 
standing before her. He reproved her for her lack of 
courage in pushing forward an undertaking so conducive to 
the spiritual welfare of His people; and she, filled with 
equal confusion and sorrow, besought His merciful forgive- 
ness, promising an immediate compliance with His wishes. 

This last vision is here mentioned, because all the latest 
historians of the Ursuline Order have recorded it. Without 
vouching for its having happened, especially with the cir- 
cumstances above related, we deem it due to the reader not 
to pass it over in silence. But whether it occurred or not, 
it is certain that during the year 1535, Angela manifested 
uncommon activity in preparing her companions, the local 
Church-authorities, and the public, for a formal inauguration 
of " The Company of St. Ursula." 

She was too humble, too sincere a lover of holy obedience, 
not to submit all her plans, as she matured them, and every 
step she purposed taking toward their execution, to her di- 



1 Among others, Eistoire de rOrdre de Ste. Ursula^ Paris and Orieans, 1776, vol. I., 
page 57. 



AISD THE UBSULINE8. 163 

rector, and through him to the episcopal approbation. And 
so the month of November came, when she had settled, 
with the consent of those who held for her God's place on 
earth, to bind herself and her twelve associates by the solemn 
obligations of their religious profession. 

The 25th day of November, 1535, is a date ever memor- 
able in the great family of St. Angela Merici. It is the 
feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr, — 
one of the many women who shone by their superior learn- 
ing in the world -renowned schools of the Egyptian capital. 
St. Catherine had shared with St. Ursula the honor of being 
the patron-saint and protectress of the great universities of 
Christendom. Was it because both of these saints repre- 
sented the union of heroic maidenly purity with superior 
knowledge, that Angela chose the name of the one as that 
by which her Company should be known through all time, 
and the feast of the other as the most propitious day 
for its inauguration? Is there a divine instinct in the 
founders of Religious Orders, which compels them to 
build better than they know? And does not the spiritual 
edifice grow to a degree of supernatural beauty and 
strength, all unconscious the while of the Hand which 
guides the builder? 

On the morning, then, of November the 25th, 15S5, 
Angela with her chosen Twelve began the day by assisting 
at early Mass in her favorite church of St. Afra, and receiv- 
ing in Christ's divinest Gift here below the pledge of that 
eternal possession with which He rewards the souls who give 
themselves wholly to Him and to promoting His interests. 
Then proceeding, intoxicated with a holy joy, to their 
Oratory on the Cathedral Square, they fulfilled, in presence 
of the proper authorities, and their invited friends, the 
solemn formalities required for the canonical institution of 



164 ST. ANGELA MEEICl 

the Company of St. Ursula/ After pronouncing their vows, 
all subscribed an act by which they bound themselves to each 
other and to a full observance of the rules of the Company. 
But the Spirit who presided over that pious assemblage 
and these touching formalities, moved others among the 



1 Let us compare what thus took place in Brescia, on November 25th, 1535, with 
what had occurred in Paris on August 15, 1534. One of the most God-like men of the 
many w^ho glorified God and His Church in the 16th century, the Blessed Peter Favre, 
thus relates, in his own private diary, the first inauguration of the ''Company of 
Jesus:"— "In this same year, 1534, in August, on the feast of the Assumption of the 
Holy Virgin, we, all of us having come to the same resolution, and made the Spiritual 
exercises,— Master Francis (Xavier) had not done this yet, though he had the same res- 
olution as ourselves,— went to the chapel of Notre Dame (deMontmartre), near Paris, 
and each made a vow to go at the time fixed to Jerusalem, and to place ourselves ^lihen 
we returned in the hands of the Pope; and to leave, after a certain interval, our kins- 
folk and our nets, and keep nothing hut the money necessary for the journey. At this 
first meeting were present Ignatius, Master Francis (Xavier), myself, Bobadilla, 
Laynez, Salmeron, Simon (Rodriguez), and M. John (Cordure). Le Jay had not come 
to Paris, and Paschase (Bronet) had not yet been gained. The two following years we all 
returned on the same day to the same place to renew our resolve, and each time we 
felt greatly strengthened." 

The holy place in which the Company of Jesus thus had birth, was a crypt beneath 
the Church. Peter Favre, the only priest among them, celebrated Mass. Before gi^dng 
them communion, he turned toward them with the Blessed Sacrament. Each in a firm 
voice recited the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience to the Pope, and a vow to go to 
Palestine to convert the infidels. They promised, moreover, not to aecept any money 
for their sacerdotal ministrations. Then they received the Divine Gift,— the Almighty 
Giver flooding their souls with such joy and blissful fervor, that to the end of their 
lives they could not recall the memory of that day without feeling their souls lifted up- 
ward by a great wave of spiritual rapture. " When I think of that time," says Father 
Genelli, "I seem to behold the entire scene, to share the hopes and great designs of 
that little band, to see through the thickening gloom of the intervening years light 
from Heaven descending, glorifying the obscure crypt and filling those souls with a 
thrill of triumph. In that moment, so full of mighty promise for the coming years, 
these men must have known that God was with them, that His Spirit was fitting them 
to achieve lofty deeds and glorious ^ictories in the midst of a generation whose hearts 
had lost all generous warmth, and who were buried in the apathy of absorbing self- 
love. Never till that day did so small a band of soldiers set forth bent on conquering 
a world; never were true hearts inspired by a higher courage." 

The rest of the day was passed near a spring in the fields, whose waters, tradition 
said, had been stained by the blood of the martyred St. Denis. There they broke their 
fast, while feasting their souls on the sweet manna of brotherly love. . . Oh, how 
like to each other are the works of the Spirit of Christ in Paris and at Brescia! 



AND THE URSULINE8, 165 

maidens of Brescia then and there to cast their lot with 
Angela. So that, ere they quitted the Oratory on that 
memorable morning, fifteen others had joined the Twelve, 
raising their number to twenty-eight in all. Who can tell 
the joy of Angela Merici on that day which crowned the 
long labors, the long waiting and suffering of a life now in 
its sixty-first year? 

There was for the Foundress and her companions, one 
special reason for choosing the Feast of St. Catherine as the 
day of the formal inauguration of their company, a reason 
which we should distinctly point out here. The great Maiden- 
Scholar and Martyr of Alexandria, had lived in the bosom 
of her own family, professing before the whole world that 
she was the bride of Him who had died on the cross to re- 
deem our souls, and choosing to die a most fearful death 
rather than violate the faith which she had pledged to Him. 
Hence is it that Christian Art, embodying the constant tradi- 
tion of preceding ages, represents St. Catherine, when re- 
ceived into Heaven, after her triumph over the persecutor's 
fury, as receiving from Christ Himself the ring, the symbol 
of eternal fidelity and unfailing love. 

I^ow, — as we shall be able to convince ourselves, when 
analyzing the constitutions given to the early Ursulines by 
St. Angela, — every one of the twenty-eight whose names 
were registered as her companions on November 25, 1535, 
was a maiden and purposed to be the ever-faithful bride of 
the Crucified. It was this dignity of Spouse of Christ, 
which was the goal of these young hearts' ambition. This 
conception of their spiritual aims, was to be fundamentaL 
for every one of them. To a life of utter devotion to Christ 
and His dearest interests, as the natural sequence of their 
divine espousals, these young girls had been carefully trained 
by Angela; and they in their turn, living up to this sacred 



166 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

ideal, in the midst of the world, were to educate the yonng 
girls entrusted to them, training such of them as the Spirit 
of God moved to adopt the Virginal Life, to become in due 
time, the faithful, deyoted, self-sacrificing brides of the 
Lamb. 

The Virginal Life in its most perfect purity, the exalted 
rank of Spouse of Christ, with the absolute devotion to His 
honor and interests imposed by such a dignity, — this was the 
central notion in the mind of Angela, the generating principle 
of her Institution. 

And yet, during the first stage of the Ursuline Order, the 
Foundress would not impose the emission of any vow what- 
ever, even a vow of celibacy, as an absolute condition of 
membership. While leaving to time, to the Spirit who 
guided her companions, and to the Director of their conscience, 
to determine whether such vows were necessary, and when 
they should be made, Angela insisted on the most perfect 
practice of the virtues themselves. 'Not only would she not 
have them, during this first period, — when they were on 
trial beneath the eyes of all Brescia ?nd all Upper Italy — 
subject to the seclusion of a cloistered life, or to the obliga- 
tion of living together in a community; but she would have 
them, on the contrary, remain beneath the paternal roof as 
a living and most eloquent refutation of the calumnies of 
the German Reformers, and the most eloquent exhorta- 
tion as well to the practice of the most heroic Christian 
virtues. They were to demonstrate daily and hourly by 
their conduct that Christian maidens and Christian women 
of all classes, may lead a life of prayerful retirement and 
penitential austerity, while seeking and seizing every op- 
portunity to practice charity and benefit the neighbor. 

They were bound, by the rules their Saintly Parent gave 
them, to find out the persons of their own sex who were in 



AND THE UB8ULINE8. 167 

need of spiritual consolation, or suffering from illness or 
poverty. They were to use all industry and prudence in 
instructing the ignorant, especially in the knowledge of the 
truths and duties of religion. But, above all, they were to 
draw to themselves the little children, those of their own 
sex in particular. The training and education of these 
little ones was to be their principal labor, to which all their 
other labors were to be subordini:,ted. But the novices and 
younger members of the Order were to avoid carefully the 
acquaintance of all persons of ill or doubtful repute. The 
reclaiming ot* these was to be the work of others. 

In other respects Angela opened as widely as possible the 
doors to the admission of all who were deserving, — whether 
they were rich or poor, learned or unlearned, of high or of 
low degree; she excluded no postulant who brought to the 
company a virginal soul, a sound judgment, any one who was 
well principled, constant in her purpose, single-minded and 
single-hearted. 

As to their dress it was to be of woollen texture, modest 
both in its color and its make, with a black veil of the same 
material, and cloak for inclement weather. Thus apparelled, 
the members of the Sisterhood would be able to attend to 
their holy avocations in the most public places or indoors 
without creating surprise or calling forth comment. Angela 
herself continued to wear to the end of her life the dark blue 
habit by which she was so well known, — and the close re- 
semblance to it of that worn by her associates only served to 
conciliate respect and popularity. 

The members of the Company were to cultivate toward 
each other the most active charity, — all, no matter how dis- 
tinguished otherwise by rank or by wealth, laboring to sup- 
port themselves by their own manual labor, in imitation of 
Christ and His Apostles, — and all contributing promptly and 



168 ^T. ANGELA MEBICl 

generously to aid such among them as were suffering from 
extreme poverty or illness. Indeed they showed the most 
tender care of their sick and dying Sisters, as well as a pious 
zeal in decently burying their <lead and seeing to it that the 
souls of their departed dear ones were not forgotten in the 
Holy Sacrifice and in the good works performed by the living. 

Toward their parents, their nearest relations, or such as 
b^Id toward the Sisters the place of father and mother in the 
home, Angela was careful to inculcate the greatest and 
most loving reverence. It was a chief object of her wise 
solicitude to secure the hearty co-operation of the heads of 
families and households in forwarding the great work she 
had in hand, and in fostering among their children or de- 
pendents the pursuit of holiness and the accomplishment of 
the sacred labors of charity and teaching. 

As we said above, the noblest and most influential men and 
women in Brescia took an active part in forwarding the 
establishment of the Company of St. Ursula, and in protect- 
ing it from all obstacles during its early stages. Outside of 
Brescia, in Milan, Cremona and Bergamo, as well as in Des- 
enzano, Salo, and Verona, the most powerful personages and 
the most distinguished for enlightened piety, sympathized 
heartily with the Foundress and her work, and were waiting 
impatiently to see the goodly tree of the Company so speed- 
ily attain to its full growth that it might extend its off-shoots 
to their own neighborhood. 

The new Sisterhood, as we have also said, was called by 
Angela, '* the Company of St. Ursula," just as at the same time 
the glorious spiritual militia organized by St. Ignatius Loyola 
was by him denominated *nhe Company of Jesus." There 
was, both in the mind of the Holy Maid of Desenzano and 
in that of the heroic Spanish soldier, a military conception. 
Angela wanted her associates to form in the midst of secular 



AND THE URSULINES. 169 

life, a band of Maidens, like Ursula and her followers, holding 
aloft the banner of the Virginal Life, and becoming the 
fruitful spiritual parents of the young of their own sex and 
the loving nurses and handmaids of Christ's poor and afflicted 
wherever they were found. Ignatius, on the other hand, 
called his associates to become the Companions of the Lord 
Jesus, the Great Captain of Salvation, in subjecting the whole 
earth to the knowledge, the love, and the service of the 
Father and King of Ages. Angela never concealed her purpose 
of placing her Companions as the defenders and promoters of 
the Catholic faith, the Catholic life and institutions, in every 
city and in every household into which the doctrines and 
practices of Luther and Calvin were then sought to be intro- 
duced throughout Italy. It is, indeed, a well-known histori- 
cal fact, that Calvin not only visited Margaret of Navarre 
and made of her court a centre from which he propagated his 
tenets, but that he visited her sister Renee, Duchess of 
Ferrara, in order to confirm the latter in her attachment to 
the new Reformation. Besides more than one of the vil- 
lage-communities in the valleys of Upper Italy had embraced 
or favored the Reformed doctrines, — while in the great cities 
themselves, like Venice, such apostates as Bernardine Ochino, 
the General of the Franciscans, were laboring stealthily under 
the monastic garb or the priest's cassock, to pervert the minds 
of their unsuspecting fellow-citizens. 

Indeed, there were thus two hostile armies, standing face 
to face in the homes and cities of Northern and Central Italy, 
— the army of the disguised enemies of the Catholic Church 
and its distinctive institutions, — and another army, composed 
of the Company of St. Ursula, the little band called the Com- 
pany of Jesus, and St. Cajetano de Tiene's more numerous 
cohort. of Theatines. The latter, — the Catholic army, — 
strove, and strove effectually, to counteract the manoeuvres 



170 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

of the former, to fill all minds, homes, and hearts with the 
light of the Christian faith and the beauty of holiness, and 
thus was stopped the progress of Protestantism in Italy. 

But let us look more attentively at this first organization 
of the Company of St. Ursula. Angela, for the purpose 
she had in view, divided the city of Brescia into *^ districts.'^ 
The novices and accepted young maidens of each district 
were under the immediate care and instruction of a Mistress, 
who was always a person of superior virtue, zeal, and prac- 
tical knowledge of things spiritual. To her came for in- 
struction and guidance all the younger novices and members 
residing within the districts; and on her it was incumbent 
to visit, once at least within each fortnight, all who were 
subject to her, in their own houses. Each district had also 
another officer named Directress, — a widow-lady of at least 
50 years of age, of spotless reputation, high social rank, 
and of known prudence and wisdom. These were to repre- 
sent the Foundress, to bestow on their respective charge all 
the watchful care and tenderness of the truest motherly love, 
never losing sight of any of the young souls committed to 
them, warding off from them every danger, cultivating in 
them every quality of heart and mind, encouraging them to 
aim higher and higher every day, and shining before them 
on the road of perfection with the steady glow of their own 
holiness. To each Governess was assigned an Advisor, — 
who was to be her assistant and executive, taking note of 
everything that required attention and remedy, and referring 
it to the Directress. These Advisors or Counselors were 
also called by the Saint CollonnelU^ — a military designation 
from which is derived our own word colonel.^ Thus every 
district had its own government. Matrons, Counselors, 

1 The Italian collonnello,— from coUonna, a column,— was a title given in the 16th 
century to the leader or commander of a column of soldiers. 



AI^D THE UBSULINES. 171 

Mistresses, Members, and Novices, — all moving forward in 
the regular performance of their assigned duties, — these 
superior officers referring to Angela herself at all times for 
special direction whenever there was need of it, and all, at 
stated intervals, meeting her in council to confer with her 
upon the advancement and welfare of the Company. 

The Foundress, experienced as she was m the Ways of the 
world and the things of God, was also careful to secure for 
her associates protectors and defenders among tlie most il- 
lustrious citizens of Brescia. Of course snch men as Penta- 
goli, Augustine Gallo, and Antonio dei Romani, could never 
fail to befriend Angela and her daughters to their utnaost. 
Nevertheless, she used these old and trusty friends to pro- 
cure the powerful support and protection of other men of 
the world, who should, at any moment, be ready to defend 
the nascent society and its members from the insults, the 
slanders, or the injustice of wrong-doers. 

There is no exaggeration, therefore, in saying, that not 
only all Brescia, but all Lombardy and Venetia, felt deeply 
interested in the experiment tried with such singular success 
by the Holy Maid of Desenzano. We know that at the very 
time, on that November morning, 1535, Angela and her band 
of twelve were receiving Holy Communion in the Church of 
St. Afra, and thus preparing to bind themselves to each 
other by solemn promise later in the forenoon, Ignatius 
Loyola was scrambling, way-worn, sore-footed, fainting, and 
sick, across the Appennines from Genoa to Bologna, and 
thence to Venice, there to await the arrival from Paris of 
his nine first companions. It is a tale that moves to the 
loftiest sympathy the soul of the Christian reader, — this of 
the noble Spanish Cavalier and his chosen followers coming 
to Venice on foot across the continent, through fatigues and 
dangers which might discourage the bravest spirit and break 



172 ^^' ANGELA MEBICl 

down the most robust, and then, after vainly waiting for 
a passage to Palestine over seas infested by the pitiless 
Mohammedan, offering their lives to the Vicar of Christ, re- 
ceiving holy orders beneath the shadow of St. Mark's, and 
then spreading over Northern and .Central Italy, with hearts 
? 11 aflame and tongues of living fire, to kindle in all who 
heard them the love of the Holy Xame, the deep regret for 
sin committed, and the heroic resolve to lead godly lives.' 



1 Stewart Rose (" Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits") thus describes the voyage 
of Ignatius from Valencia to Venice: *' When Ignatius left the house of his friend 
Martin Perez, where he had lodged in Valencia many days, to embark for Italy, the 
sea was infested by pirates; Barbarossa had driven Muley Hassan from Tunis, and 
swept the Mediterranean with a fleet of 100 galleys, plandering both by sea and land. 
He did not fall in with the vessel which bore Ignatius; that danger was averted by 
another; it was caught in a violent storm, the helm carried away, the mast broken. . . 
At last they reached the port of Genoa; but he was not yet safe. In crossing the 
Appennines to Bologna, he lost his way, and found himself, after much scrambling and 
climbing, on the brink of a precipice, where he could neither advance, nor without 
difficulty, return. He had to crawl on hands and knees up steep rocks, which over- 
hung a torrent far below, holding on by ledges of rock, or by herbs gro\N'ing in the 
cre\ices. He said afterwards that he had never been in greater danger; his escape 
seemed to him a miracle. He arrived sick at Bologna. The winter was advancing, 
the rains had set in, the roads were flooded, and when at last the weather mended 
and he had reached the town, as he entered it his foot slipped in passing a bridge, and 
he fell into a moat. He rose bruised, wet through, and covered with mud. All along 
the streets the boys shouted at him; he asked alms but nothing was given to him; he 
would have perished of hunger and cold but for the Spanish College, which took him 
in and sheltered him kindly until he had recovered strength. Then after a week he 
set off for Venice.'" This was in the beginning of December. Not before January 6, 
1537, did his nine companions from Paris join him in Venice. Theirs had been a long, 
exhausting, and most perilous journey, — doubly perilous, because they had to pass 
through Lutheran Switzerland and Germany, while a new and terrible war was break- 
ing oat between Francis I. and Charles V. In Venice " they resided in the Hospital 
of the Incurables and that of St. John and St. Paul. There they all taught the truths 
of their religion, attended the sick, helped the dying, and followed the dead. . . These 
men of consummate learning and rare gifts, some of them highly bom, thought no 
oflice too humble for them. They washed and lifted in their arms men suffering from 
loathsome diseases; watched them by night, consoled, and showed them how to make 
sufferings and misfortune a privilege and a joy." No wonder that " this great charity 
edified all who saw it; the Senators and chief men of the Republic often went to look 
at th«ir apostolic work, and many shed tears of emotion at the sight." 



AND THE URSULINES. 173 

Little knew those who looked upon the pale, emaciated, 
love-lit countenances of the poor strangers, as they sped, two 
by two, through the cities and hamlets of the beauteous but 
desolated land, lisping divinest exhortation in the unfamiliar 
Italian idiom, — that these poor priests would soon swell 
to a mighty host of apostles covering both hemispheres with 
their cohorts, and thrilling astonished Christendom with 
their God-like labors and sufferings. On what lowly but 
divinely fashioned foundations was to grow that Company 
of Jesus, the undying object of so much hate, and such 
atrocious misrepresentation, but the object too of world- 
wide love and enlightened admiration! 

Without instituting comparisons which might startle the 
imperfectly informed reader, though more than acceptable 
to the conscientious student of history, — we may say this 
much, that Ignatius himself was but vaguely conscious in 
1536, of the mighty growth to which his Company was des- 
tined, and could not have foreseen all the varied labors v/hich 
his sons were destined to embrace in their zeal for the 
glory of God. Still less did Angela Merici forecast the per- 
manent forms which the Church, within half a century 
after her death, was to bestow on the original mode of life 
and the inspired rules bequeathed to the Company of St. 
Ursula as Brescia beheld it at its birth. Both founders 
" builded better than they knew." 

At any rate, while the pulpits of "the Hundred Cities of 
Italy" resounded with an eloquence that rekindled on every 
side the expiring fiame of faith and piety, — people flocked 
from the countryside and all the neighboring cities to Brescia, 
to be edified by the eloquent lives of Angela and her com- 
panions. Their pulpit was in the family-home, in the school- 
room, in the hospital, in the darkened hovel of poverty, and 
by the bed of suffering, — in the divinely-appointed sphere 



174 ST- ANGELA MERICl 

of woman's loving, devoted, and irresistible influence. They 
toiled away, that lowly maiden band, making themselves 
most worthy of God, their supreme Love, and most careful 
of the interests of the souls dear to Him, leaving to Him 
and to His Providence over the Church — to grant an increase 
to their numbers, and a blessing to their labors, and Guch 
form as might please His wisdom to their little Company. 

And so that Company went on, purifying, gladdening, en- 
lightening all homes and hearts in Brescia, — like the stream- 
lets descending through the Alpine valleys above the old 
Celtic city, which fertilize and brighten every home-field 
on their way, till they pour, at length, their united waters 
into some one of Northern Italy's majestic lakes, or thence 
flow onward to join some one of its lordly rivers, as these 
roll onward to the Adriatic, blessing the teeming plains and 
adorning the populous cities on their way. 

And is it not a strange coincidence, that, while we are 
describing the beginnings, in Italy, of these two great relig- 
ious societies, — the members of both should be compelled by 
the prevailing anti-Catholic Revolution in that same Italy, 
to live, throughout the length 'and breadth of that land,— 
as lived their parents from 1535 to 1540? The Countess E. 
Girelli, the author of one of the best lives of St. Angela,^ 
tells us how she has labored in Northern Italy, to maintain 
or to restore the suppressed Ursuline communities by induc- 
ing them to live in their homes according to the form of the 
piimitive Company. Thus, though driven from their homes, 
and despoiled of all their property, the daughters of St. 
Angela are able to do God's work as they may, blessed of 
Him in their labors, and blessed as well by the people who 
more than ever need their example and their womanly 



1 These Ursulines thus living in the world are known as the Pious Union. 



AND THE URSULINES. 175 

charity. Even so is it with the Sons of St. Ignatius. They, 
too, are forced to place themselves at the command of the 
bishops, and labor as labored Francis Xavier, and Peter 
Favre, and Ignatius himself. And so God's work is carried 
on, despite the adverse powers which would seem to sweep 
away the laborers and to destroy the harvest. The Radical 
tidal wave which is sweeping over Europe, and which 
threatens the whole civilized world, may " suppress" every 
religious institution, and disperse mercilessly the members 
of all religious communities. But if the spirit of Angela 
Merici and Ignatius Loyola still animates their per- 
secuted children, the apostleship of edification and educa- 
tion will be carried on quietly, obscurely, but most fruitfully 
despite the persecutor's utmost vigilance. Achab and 
Jezabel had fancied that their ubiquitous emissaries had ex- 
terminated the schools of the Prophet throughout Israel. 
They had driven even Elias to seek an asylum and a morsel of 
bread from the starving widow of Sarephta, in the land of 
the idolaters. But Elias was doomed not to die, while 
Achab was to perish on the spot where he had shed the 
blood of the innocent Naboth, there the dogs were to lick 
up his guilty blood, while a still more terrible fate awaited 
his wicked queen, as the great prophet had foretold. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Angela's woek — the constitutions of the company of 

st. ursula. 

Those who habitually approached the saint during this 
important period of her life, are unanimous in attesting that 
her assiduity in prayer and her customary austerities were 
increased to an incredible degree. She was more than ever 
anxious to obtain light from on high in order to frame for 
her Company such constitutions and rules as should secure 
unity and stability, while leaving free scope to the modifica- 
tions required by the future necessities of time and place. 
More even than her advanced age, her increasing bodily in- 
firmities warred her to give definite shape to her handiwork. 
Although she not only read Italian authors, but was well 
versed in Latin literature, in all that pertained to the Scrip- 
tures and their most authorized commentators, in particular, 
she had never accustomed herself to write. She was boi^n 
while the art of printing was in its infancy and before skill in 
penmanship had ceased to be the science of the few. She 
therefore called to her assistance a Notary of Brescia, 
Gabriel Cozzano by name, a man held in high estimation for 
his learning, integrity, and solid virtue, — one in whom she 
could repose the most implicit trust; and to him she dicta- 
ted the constitutions which were to be submitted, first to 
176 



ST. ANGELA MERICL I77 

the approbation of the diocesan authority, and then to the 
supreme judgment of the Holy See. She consulted on 
every point, which came under consideration, the most en- 
lightened and experienced of her own associates, as well as 
her trusted spiritual guides, and the devoted lay friends who 
had sustained and protected her during her long years 
of trials and discouraging delays. When the matter sub- 
mitted to these for deliberation had been determined in her 
own mind, she had recourse to prayer, — pushing her holy 
vigils far into the night, beseeching the Divine Majesty for 
special guidance during Holy Mass and communion, and pro- 
longing before the altar her pleadings with the Master, till 
the interior Voice had told her that her supplication was 
heard. 

Cozzano, who wrote under her direction, after protracted 
communications with the source of heavenly light, says of 
the primitive Ursuline Rule as drawn up by him beneath the 
eye of the Foundress : "In this work there is nothing which 
belongs to me, except the trifling merit of having expressed 
in writing, as faithfully as I could, her own (Angela's) sen- 
timents. . . She alone, divinely inspired as she was, is the 
Foundress of this great edifice; but, in a letter prefatory to 
the Rules, she humbly expressed the wish that I should not 
mention her name." ^ 

If we compare the method followed in Brescia by the 
Foundress of the Ursulines with that afterward pursued in 
Rome by St. Ignatius in drawing up the constitutions of his 
Company, we cannot help being impressed by the fact, that 



'^Non vi ho niente del mio, eccetto un pochetto de scriver fidelmente, quantopotei^ li 
suGi sentementi. Ella sola divinamente inspirata e stata la Foundatrice de tanta opera^ 
ma in una epistola prcemiale alle Regole, voile per umilta, che io tacessi il suo nome. 

These words are taken from a published pamphlet of Cozzano' s, in which he explains 
the Bull of Paul III., Begimini univeralis ecclesice^ approving the work of St. Angela. 



178 ^T' ANGELA MEBICl 

the same preternatural wisdom presided over the delibera- 
tions of both the one and the other. It is fashionable among 
modern liberal non-Catholic writers to say of Ignatius that 
he was an enthusiast, — sincere, indeed, in his convictions, 
and acting up to them as he best knew how, but that he 
was, nevertheless, nothing but an enthusiast, and as such 
subject to the most dangerous illusions. Such, — to name one 
among many, — is the repeated assertion of the fascinating 
but most untrustworthy Macaulay. 

Now, if we look into authentic history and read on the 
testimony of the most venerable and enlightened witnesses, — 
what method Ignatius scrupulously followed in framing his 
Constitutions, we are struck by two things; the incredible 
patience with which at every step aiid on seemingly minor 
details, this most reasonable of saints balanced long and se- 
riously the motives for and against every prescription and 
rule as it came in order, — and the superhuman fervor with 
which he sought the aid of the divine light. 

"In framing the Constitutions which were to regulate his 
society through all time," — says Mr. Stewart Rose, — '^ Loyola 
proceeded with the utmost circumspection and humility, 
preparing himself before he wrote by prayer and meditation; 
then, imitating the holy Pope Leo, he placed what he had 
written upon the altar, and offered his plans to God in the 
Sacrifice of the Mass. He deliberated on every point with 
extreme patience and caution. A fragment of the journal 
kept by him, which escaped the flames when he burned all 
his other papers, a short time before he died, refers to the 
question he long weighed, — whether the churches and sac- 
risties of the houses of the Professed should be able to ac- 
quire property. He considered this point forty days; he 
wrote down eight reasons on one side and fifteen on the 
other, laying the whole as usual before God. , . On one 



AND THE URSULINE8. I79 

point he deliberated ten days, and after deciding, passed four 
more in prayer. He consulted the other Fathers on every- 
thing, but usually not till he had well considered the matter 
himself, and come to some decision; and it was a common 
practice of his to write down the reasons for and against in 
parallel columns. He withdrew sometimes from all other 
business to carry on this work. When he was in his room, 
Benedetto Palmia, a novice, was placed at the door that he 
might not be interrupted. He had read with great attention 
the rules of other Religious Orders, and employed Polanco 
to make extracts from them. But while he wrote his own, 
no books were near him, except the Scriptures and the '* Imi- 
tation." Perhaps Cardinal Lega knew this when he said 
that the art by which the Society of Jesus had been so aptly 
and admirably formed, was divine, not human, and that 
Ignatius had built it up rather by inspiration than by skill." ^ 
At any rate, both Angela and Ignatius showed in the child- 
like simplicity with which they submitted every word they 
wrote or dictated to the judgment of the Church, — that 
God was with them, and that they sought Htm alone in the 
crowning work of their lives. No sooner had Angela com- 
pleted her sketch of the Constitutions, than she hastened to 
submit it to Francis Cornaro, Cardinal-bishop of Brescia, and 
through him to the authority of the Holy See. From Rome, 
where all such things are weighed with the slow deliberation 
of a wisdom derived from the experience of ages, no appro- 
bation came till several years after the death of the Found- 
ress. In Brescia, however, Cardinal Cornaro, who derived 
such consolation from the labors of Angela and her com- 
panions, at once committed the examination of the precious 
document to his Vicar-General, Lorenzo Muzio. The latter 
would not chancre an iota in what he knew to be the work of 



'Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits," pp. ^40-41, 2nd ed. 



180 ^T. ANGELA MERIGI, 

a saint and believed to be dictated by the Holy Spirit. So 
an oflScial decree was issued on August 8th, 1536, bestowing 
on the Constitutions and Company of St. Ursula the canoni- 
cal approval of the Ordinary in terms of the highest com- 
mendation. 

It was a happy day for Angela, who felt assured that the 
supreme judgment of the Vicar of Christ would, in God's 
good time, be added to that of the Bishop of Brescia. And 
so, the vision of Brudazzo, in which, forty years before, the 
Maid of Desenzano had beheld that glorious company of 
virgins descending and ascending amid a throng of angels 
and the chanting of heavenly harmonies, had at length re- 
ceived its complete realization. The command then imposed 
on her to establish in Brescia a like company of virgin souls 
devoted to God and His Church, was fulfilled in spite of in- 
terminable delays and obstacles ever-recurring and seemingly 
insurmountable. 

During the ensuing Autumn and Winter the holy Found- 
ress busied herself in explaining to her subordinates every 
point of the Rule thus sanctioned by the ecclesiastical 
superiors, and in impressing on the minds of all the spirit of 
absolute devotion to the Divine Majesty and most perfect 
self-renouncement which underlay the letter of the Consti- 
tutions. It was her wish that every one of those who 
elected to adopt this Rule as their law of life, should do so 
understandingly, freely, and lovingly. The allegiance 
pledged to its observance was not to be a divided al- 
legiance: the pledge was to come from a heart that wholly 
belonged to God. 

So far the Company which ^he had created looked up to her 
as a parent whose sway all acknowledged and obeyed with 
unquestioning submission and grateful love, No one, in 
their estimation, could ever, so long as she liY^dj take her 



AJ^D THE URSULINES, 181 

place at the head of their little company of apostles. No 
one had so deep a horror of the Reformed doctrines which 
were daily gaining ground in Upper Italy, thanks to the 
constantly renewed quarrels between the King of France 
and the Emperor, — and to the undisguised and unholy policy 
of Francis L, who encouraged the Lutherans, throughout 
the Empire, to refuse all settlement of their religious diffi- 
culties, while he subsidized the Turkish sovereign to invade 
the dominions of Austria and ravage the coasts of Spain 
and Italy. Angela instinctively and intuitively felt the 
danger which threatened faith in her native land, and knew 
that God demanded of herself and her daughters to combat 
the spread of the new errors in every home in Brescia. 

But she believed herself incapable of governing the Com- 
pany and of directing its fresh energies to the best advan- 
tage. She was therefore anxious to place in younger and 
firmer hands the charge which she had borne hitherto. And, 
as the Rule prescribed that an election should be held as 
soon as possible after the canonical approbation of the dio- 
cesan authority had been obtained, Angela was impatient to 
see this done, and thereby to secure the legal establishment 
of her Order. Imperative reasons, however, compelled her 
to put off, from month to month, the holding of the first 
general Chapter till the spring of 1537. 

They met in her poor room at St. Afra's on the 18th of 
March. A Notary Public was called in to draw up in legal 
form the minutes of the proceedings, so that everything 
should be done with blameless regularity. Angela, it is said, 
spent the whole of the preceding night in prayer, and was 
even favored by another apparition of St. Ursula, who took 
on herself the protection of the new Company, assured the 
Foundress of God's especial favor, and of the perpetuity of 
her work, and left the great motherly heart all flooded with 



182 ^T. ANGELA MERICl 

unspeakable consolation. The Notary counted 59 persons 
present in the crowded room, and 17 were reckoned as being 
unavoidably absent, thus raising, on this first authentic roll 
of the Company of St. Ursula, the total number of mem- 
bers entitled to vote, to 76 in all. 

The choice of a Superior-General was the first thing in 
order, and, as the authentic record of the meeting testifies, 
Angela was elected instantly and unanimously; she alone 
combating the wisdom of such a choice by every argument 
she could think of.^ She prayed, she besought them with 
the greatest earnestness to reconsider their vote, and to re- 
member her own manifold un worthiness and incapacity. 
And as they persisted in their determination, she alleged, as 
a reason which must strike and convince them all, her ad- 
vanced age and increasing bodily infirmities, which precluded 
her from attending to the duties of so important an office, 
especially when there was need of sovereign wisdom and in- 
defatigable activity. She had to yield; for nothing could 
move the members present to make another choice. Only at 
their venerated Mother's urgent solicitation, they consented 
not to press upon her the title of Foundress, nor to have it 
inserted in the records of the Order. God alono, she 
thought, was to be considered as the originator of their 
choice band of maiden champions of His cause. 

They next proceeded to elect Mistresses for the different 
wards of the city, and Lady-Directresses. These latter were 
only four in number for the present, the Lady Lucretia, widow 
of Count Hector Lodrone, the Lady Ginevra (Genevieve), 
widow of Alexandro Luzzago, the Lady Ursula, widow 
of Jerome Gavardo, and the Lady Maria, widow of Antonio 
Avvogadro. To these was added, as supernumerary, the 
Lady Lucretia, wddow of Paul Luzzago; she, however, did 

1 Salvatori, whom we follow here as elsewhere. 



AND THE URSULINES, 183 

not long continue to occupy this place in the Company. The 
number of Lady-Directresses was soon increased to eight as 
the Foundress saw that the rapid increase of the Com- 
pany demanded a corresponding increase in the number of 
these important functionaries. So, to the first four names 
were added those of the Lady Veronica Buzzi, Joanna Monte, 
Elizabeth Prato, Leonella Pedezocca, and Catherine Meia. 
To each of these was assigned the care of one of the eight 
districts of Brescia. The Countess Lodrone became Angela's 
chief assistant, her right hand in governing the Sisterhood, 
and was appointed by her in her last illness Vicar, with power 
to govern in her stead till her successor had been duly elected. 
As we shall see, Lucretia Lodrone was chosen to fill Angela's 
place. 

No sooner was the Company thus definitely organized, than 
the Superior-General deemed it incumbent on her to provide 
for the spiritual direction of its members priests alike pre- 
eminent for their spotless life, their knowledge of theology, 
and their experience in guiding souls. . It is so necessary, in 
a great religious body, to make sure that one spirit shall control 
the consciences of all, and point their united efforts in the 
same road toward self-sanctification and the service of others! 
Fortunately for Angela and her Ursulines, they found two 
such men in Brescia ready and willing to bestow their 
enlightened zeal in forwarding the best interests of the 
new Order. These were Father Paul of Cremona, a member 
of the Order of Canons Regular of St. John Lateran, and 
Father Chrysanthus, a member of the Venetian Congregation 
of St. George-in-Alga and a Canon of the Church of San 
Pietro in Oliveto, at Brescia. To these may be added a 
noble Brescian, Father Francis Cabrini, whose family took 
their title from the neighboring domain of Alfianello. This 
last saintly priest, himself the founder of a religious Congre- 



184 ST. ANGELA MEEICI, 

gation,* was not, however, associated with the two preceding 
in their ministrations toward St. Angela and her first com- 
panions. Not before 1556 did he become the spiritual guide 
of the Ursulines of Brescia; but his zeal and devotion to 
them were such as to cause his memory to live among them 
by the side of their first venerated directors. 

One other name merits a special mention here by the side 
of Angela herself, with whom she was singularly united in 
holy friendship and ardent zeal for the progress of the Com- 
pany. This noble lady's name is Girolama Buschi. Even 
in the world Girolama lived the life of a saint, and threw 
herself with her whole heart and with all the influence of 
her high position into the good work of co-operating with 
Angela's female friends and admirers in Brescia, — such as 
the Countess Lodrone and Elizabeth Prato, — lending them 
her countenance and active aid in their labors in the hospi- 
tals, and in their successful efforts to educate the rising gener- 
ation. She was a true child of God, this magnanimous 
daughter of Brescia, and she walked with no faltering or 
tardy step in the road of self-sacrifice. Angela owed to her 
not a little of the rapid progress which the Ursulines made, 
both in the well organized labors which gained them so wide 
a popularity, and in the heroic virtues which won them the 
admiration of their most intimate friends and watchful 
observers amorig the clergy and laity.'^ Girolama herself be- 
came an Ursuline, and died in the odor of sanctity in 1545, 
yearning to be united in Heaven to her dear Mother Angela, 
and there to pray for th« growth of the Company. 

We must not pass away from this portion of our subject 



1 The Congregation of Regular Clerks of Santa Xaria della Pace, in Brescia, united 
In 1611 to the Congregation of St. Philip Neri. 

2 In the rare manuscript called Brescia Beata is a biography of the distinguished 
lady, from the pen of its author, F. Benjamin Zacchi, an Augustinian monk. 



AND THE URSULINE8. 185 

Without bestowing on the written Constitutions of the Order 
which Angela Merici founded, such notice as may enable the 
reader to grasp their aim and scope. The Constitutions 
themselves are given in their entirety elsewhere/ Being the 
work of our Saint, it is proper that the reader should be able 
to judge of this production, not by unsatisfactory extracts, 
but from a faithful translation of the document itself, as it 
comes to us from the very best authority. 

As to the purpose which the Holy Foundress had in view, 
we can best gather it from the lips of the Sovereign Pontiffs, 
who, from the 16th to the 19th century, have uttered their 
solemn judgment on St. Angela and her Institute. 

We quote m the first place the words of Pius IX. In 
the year 1861, just when only a narrow strip of territory 
was left to him around the walls of Rome, and when the 
rest of Italy was overrun by the destroying hosts of Radi- 
calism, the Holy Father felt instinctively that the future of 
Christian Italy must depend on the education given to the 
young girls. They would be the mothers of the coming 
generation; and on them would depend whether their sons 
and daughters would be the disciples of a godless materialism 
and an anti-christian socialism, or the fervent disciples of 
the Faith which had made Italy the light and envy of the 
world. 

The Pontiff knew that Angela had been the first Apostle 
of Female Education in modern times, and that the Order 
founded by her had devoted its entire energies to creating 
Christian mothers for Christian homes, true Christian women 
for the edification of all classes of modern society. He 
therefore bethought him, beleaguered as he was by the ad- 
vancing tide of the Revolution, that one of the most effica- 
I ^ 

1 Chap. 



186 ST, ANGELA MERIGI, 

cious means of saving the faith and the future of Christen^ 
dom, was to glorify in the person of St. Angela the devotion 
to the task of educating youth, — female youth, especially. 
Hence a solemn decree of July 11, 1861, making the cele- 
bration of the office of St. Angela obligatory on the universal 
Church, and eulogizing her in the following terms: 

"Angelic in her life as well as in her person, St. Angela 
Merici, while upon earth, like a lily blooming among thorns, 
shed all around her a wonderful sweetness. This maiden, 
entering joyously from her youth on the road of perfection, 
reached -so high an eminence, that, a few years after her de- 
cease, St. Charles Borromeo openly declared that she was in 
every way worthy of being herself placed among the 
saints by the Holy See. After having visited with feelings 
of the deepest piety the holy places in Palestine, she came 
to Rome to venerate the tombs of the Apostles Peter and 
Paul. There she felt herself moved to promote the educa- 
tion of young girls, well knowing that these, surrounded as 
they were by the spreading errors of Calvin and Luther, 
would be in peril of losing the flower of their virginal life, 
choked as it must be by the thorny growth of heresy. She 
therefore established in Brescia a new Sisterhood of reli- 
gious maidens under the patronage and name of St. Ursula, 
Virgin and Martyr: and to their care she entrusted the 
young daughters of poor as well as rich families, to have 
them taught the elementary doctrines of our holy faith, to 
train them to lead a life of virtue and purity, and to initiate 
them into all the arts and industries which befit their sex. 

"From the labors of this Company Angela reaped a 
plentiful harvest of good to the advantage both of the 
Church and of civil society; and so plentiful was the grace 
bestowed on the Company from on high, that it spread all 
over the world, and that our Lord manifested to His servant^ 



AND THE URSULINES. 187 

the Foundress, a short time before her death, that it would 
last forever. 

" In these latter and baneful times, when wicked men use 
every means to ruin both the Church and civil society, and 
in order the better to effect their purpose, endeavor to 
corrupt the souls of women, of young girls especially, so 
that from the perverted mind of mothers the poison of error 
should flow more deeply into those of their children; — peti- 
tions have come to our Holy Father Pope Pius IX., from 
several Cardinals and many other Prelates throughout the 
world, beseeching him instantly to extend to the' whole 
Church the office and Mass of St. Angela Merici, Foundress 
of the Company of St. Ursula, — to the end that, by her 
help and merits, our Lord may be pleased to preserve the 
female sex from stain of impurity and taint of error, and 
that, baffling the designs of His enemies. He may grant to 
His Church uninterrupted peace." 

So, then, it was in Rome, while visiting the tombs of the 
Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, during the Jubilee,1525, that, — ■ 
according to Pius IX., Angela "• felt herself moved to pro- 
mote the education of young girls, w^ell knowing that these, 
surrounded as they were by the spreading heresies of Luther 
and Calvin, would be in peril," cherishing as they did the 
purpose of leading the Virginal Life in the midst of the 
world, "of losing the beautiful flower of their purity, choked 
as it must be by the thorny growth of heretical practices." 

With these maidens, thus saved from the blight of the 
spreading contagion, aud enrolled in the Company of St. 
Ursula, she set about caring for the "young daughters of 
poor as well as of rich families, teaching them the elements 
of Christian doctrine, training them to a life of virtue and 
innocence, and initiating them into all the arts and industries 
of their sex." 



188 ^^' ANUELA MEBICl, 

Thus the Ursulines, from 1540 to 1545, — the year in which 
their Institute was first approved by Paul III., — were doing 
in Brescia w^hat the Jesuits were doing in Rome, what St. 
Francis Xavier did in India, catechizing little children, sav- 
ing the little ones of the flock, and through them, saving 
their parents, but saving the little ones at any rate, by 
teaching them to know and to follow Christ. This is why 
Paul III. is said to have uttered the remarkable words put 
on record by the Annalists of the Ursuline Order, and ad- 
dressed, on the very day when he approved the Constitutions 
of St. Angela, to Ignatius Loyola: ^'Lo! we have given you 
sisters!" 

When St. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, was sent 
by the Holy See as Visitor Apostolic to examine into the ac- 
tual condition of the Company of St. Ursula, some forty 
years after the death of the Foundress, his soul was filled 
with joy at seeing the good the Sisterhood was effecting in 
the great work of education, not only in Brescia and Cremona, 
but in the surrounding territories. 

*' Among the manifold consolations and spiritual joys, 
granted to me during this visitation," — he writes to them in 
1581, — " not the least was to find your devoted Company mak- 
ing such solid progress in the ways of God, — to find among you 
so many persons whose lives are a true imitation of the 
Blessed Ursula and her companions. . . This is why I have 
felt no weariness amid the various heavy labors of this visit- 
ation." . . Elsewhere, addressing the nuns of St. Paul in 
Milan: "It must be to us a cause of deep confusion to see 
some souls, — I have known such, — who, like the Sisterhood 
of St. Ursula, are so truly pious, so athirst for the things of 
God, so fervent in receiving the Holy Communion, so averse 
to all worldly pleasures, so wrapped up in the sweet solitude 
of their own spirit; so mortified, humble, and little in their 



AND THE UB8ULIJVES. 189 

own esteem; and withal ever content and resigned to the 
Divine will! Albeit they live in the world, they display in 
it virtues which cloistered nuns might imitate to advantage." 

On the other hand, the bull of canonization of St. Angela 
(1807), affirms, in speaking of the miraculous vision of Bru* 
dazzo,that in it the Maid of Desenzano " heard the voice of our 
Lord commanding her to establish m Brescia a select com- 
pany of maidens." . . . And further on: God from heaven 
called her to the labor of procuring by manifold and won- 
derful means the eternal salvation of the neighbor and of be- 
stowing on him many other advantages. He at first moved her 
to found a Company of Maidens under the name and patronage 
of St. Ursula, for the purpose of promoting and propagating 
the pious and Christian education of young girls. And this 
Company — continues Pius VII. — " like the rose in spring- 
tide gladdens the Church by the sweet odor of its virtues, 
acquiring in the present age, as it will with the Divine Aid 
in the future, rich and glorious merits by instructing the 
youth of its own sex." 

The Church and her Pontiffs have thus declared that An- 
gela's purpose in founding her society was the Christian 
training of children of her own sex. The preternatural wis- 
dom shown in organizing the Company of St. Ursula, in 
framing for it Constitutions so admirably fitted to its two- 
fold aim of living an uncloistered life of absolute purity and 
all-embracing charity, and of winning the respect and love 
of all Christian families, — tended only to promote the essen- 
tial object of EDUCATION, thoroughly pious and Catholic 
education. 

No word is said in the Constitutions drawn up by St. An- 
gela of this great design, for which she and her companions 
and daughters through all time were the chosen instruments. 
But these Constitutions, as well as the two admirable docu- 



190 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

meuts which she dictated on her death bed, are to he read in 
the light of this providential design. When we thus study 
them, we understand how marvelously fitted they are to 
form a body of mistresses able to meet all the educational 
needs of any age or country, and able as well to survive 
what would appear radical and ruinous changes in the organ- 
ization of any other religious body. 

The holy Foundress would have her Company, as she first 
organized it and gave it laws and rules,f orm as it were a com- 
ponent part of the civil society in which she lived, with its 
roots at every hearth-stone, — so that its own divine and 
heavenly life should embrace and penetrate the whole frame- 
work of the busy world around it, and pour into all minds, 
hearts, and homes, the saving and sanctifying influences of 
supernatural faith, teaching, piety, and example. We re- 
member how a Maryland farmer once explained to us long 
ago how the wild mulberry tree took such a wonderful hold 
of its native earth, pushing its sturdy and countless roots 
far and wide, so as to extend beneath the houses of an entire 
village, or to cover with their hidden network several neigh- 
boring fields. Ah, but sweeter far, and far more precious 
than the mulberry, were the fruits borne by the tree of St. 
Angela's Sisterhood wherever it took root; and fairer and 
more glorious than all the richest silks of the East is the 
glorious soul-vesture which her daughters, — devoting them- 
selves, like the silk-worm to one purpose in life and .deaths — 
weave for the female youth of Christendom! 

She was but an instrument in the hand of the Divine 
Workman, that Holy Maid of Desenzano; and, like Moses, 
she built the Ark and its temporary surroundings as the 
Divine Voice dictated. Moses knew that a more glorious 
and permanent structure would one day replace the precious 
wood, the gold, and the gems employed in building the 



AND THE URSULINES. 191 

Holy of Holies. David continued the work of Moses, and 
Solomon executed the designs of David, erecting to the one 
true and living God a temple in which a nation might wor- 
ship. But the Ark of Moses was the very soul of Solomon's 
Temple. 

So was it with Angela. She knew that her Company was to 
last forever. She gave to its beginnings that organic form 
which was in the most perfect keeping with the spirit and 
the needs of her country and age, — infusing into that first 
form the soul of those characteristic virtues, of that heaven- 
sent wisdom, which were to pass with the name of Ursuline 
into every transformation and change rendered afterward 
necessary by the circumstances of time and place, and ap- 
proved and directed by the Spirit of God in the Church, 

Thus, with a marvelous adaptability, the parent Sisterhood 
allowed its off-shoots to be transplanted to Milan by St, 
Charles Borromeo, and there subjected to the restraints of 
cloistered life without losing any portion of its spirit, of its vi- 
tality, or of its attachment to the Brescian Company, — al- . 
though the members of this persisted in rejecting every mod- 
ification not imposed by the extreme necessity of obedience 
to lawful authority. From Milan the cloistered communi- 
ties spread to other parts of Europe, accepting with each new 
abode such change as lawful authority imposed. They were 
swarms from the primitive hive, building their own whereso- 
ever they settled, in garden or in wilderness, in strict con- 
formity with their surroundings, — with the soil and the 
climate, — but everywhere making sweetest honey, although 
every swarm was an independent community in itself — de- 
pendent only on His direction and guidance, who ruleth 
all things with the resistless might of the Infinite Creator, 
who ordereth all things with the loving gentleness of the 
best of Parents. 



CHAPTER XXIV, 

THE LAST LABORS AND TRIALS — MOST BEAUTIFUL COUNSELS-— 
THE STRONG WOMAN SETTING HER HOUSE IN ORDER. 

The approbation given to the Ursuline Institute by Cardinal 
Cornaro, bishop of Brescia, could only permit of its extension 
within the limits of that prelate's jurisdiction. In order 
to see the Company called to labor outside the diocese of 
Brescia, it was necessary to obtain the official approbation 
of the Holy See. At no period in the history of the Church, 
since the era of Constantine, was it more difficult to have the 
Sovereign Pontiff's sanction for the establishment of a new 
religious order. And, as we have seen, the Company of St. 
Ursula seemed, at first sight, to deviate widely from the 
traditional and consecrated forms of monastic life and rule, 
especially with regard to women. As an innovation, there- 
fore, upon what had since the thirteenth century, been uni- 
versally regarded as essential to the constitution of female 
Religious Orders, — the year of grace 1536 was singularly 
unfavorable towards its acceptance in Rome. The schism 
just consummated with such ruthless atrocity in England, 
and the successful progress of the Reformation in Germany 
and Switzerland, compelled Churchmen in Italy to be on 
their guard against innovations. It had required all the 

authority and influence of St. Cajetauof Tiene and of Cardinal 

192 



ST. ANGELA MERICL I93 

Caraffa (afterward Pope Paul IV.) to obtain a formal ap- 
probation of the Theatine Institute, well and widely known 
as its founder and members were throughout Italy for their 
zeal in the service of the Church, the purity of their lives, 
and the purity of their doctrine, as well. 

When, in 1538-39, Ignatius Loyola and his companions 
presented themselves to Paul III., giving him, all Rome, and 
all Italy, proof of their uncommon learning, their sound 
orthodoxy, their holy life, and most fruitful zeal, it required 
more than one delay^ and the removal of more than one 
formidable obstacle to get from the admiring Pope a first pre- 
liminary approbation of the new institute as the Company 
of Jesus, even though they only demanded to be looked upon 
as simple priests livmg in community and under a rule, like 
the Theatmes, and not as monks, like the Dominicans, 
Franciscans, Benedictmes, or Cistercians. 

The form drawn up by St. Ignatius was presented to the 
Pope by Cardinal Contarini on Sept. 3, 1539. Paul III., 
after carefully reading this form and the accompanying 
documents, exclaimed: "The finger of God is here!" 
Nevertheless, he would not dispense with the usual examin- 
ations prescribed in such weighty matters, and committed the 
petition of Ignatius and the abridged form of the proposed 
Company to a commission of three Cardinals. " But one of 
them," — says Stewart Rose — "was Bartolomeo Giudiccioni, 
of Lucca, whose opinion was entirely hostile to Religious 
Orders; and he would not even take patience to read the 
papers sent him; for^ said he, all Orders become relaxed^ and 
then do more harm to the Church than they did good In the 
heginningP Giudiccioni was a redoubtable opponent,, for he 
was an excellent theologian, a distinguished poet, possess- 
ing great abilities, and so highly venerated for his holy 
Kfe, that when he died, Paul HI. exclaimed: My successor is 



194 ST, ANGELA MERIGI, 

dead. His horror at the disorders into which many of the 
monks and nuns had fallen, made him desire, not reform, 
but suppression; he wished all orders abolished but four, 
which he would remodel and place under strict governance. 
To allow a new Order, was, to his mind, an idea not even de- 
serving to be discussed. He would not waste a thought on 
the scheme of Ignatius; and the weight of his judgment 
carried with it that of the two Cardinals conjoined with 
him/ 

Such then was the disposition of the most eminent men in 
Rome, of those with whom rested the practical decision of 
the weightiest concerns of Church government. To be 
sure, Cardinal Giudiccioni was brought to change his opin- 
ion about the Company of Jesus by something which very 
much resembled a miracle. None the less can we see, from 
the above passage, how opposed the best and most influential 
men in the Church then were to the establishment of new 
Religious Orders. 

This was one cause of Angela's disappointment in not 
seeing her work sanctioned by the supreme authority in the 
Church. There were others which stood even more in the 
way. Charles V., now the undisputed master of Italy, as 
well as of Spain and the Netherlands, and Emperor of 
Germany as well, was again at war with the restless king of 
France. While (1535) the Emperor had been chastising the 
Mohammedan pirates of Tunis and liberating from the most 
cruel bondage 22,000 Christian slaves, the Most Christian 
King was consummating an alliance with Solyman II., of 
Constantinople, and inducing him to send an army to in- 
vade Hungary and a powerful fleet to ravage the coasts of 
Italy, himself the while pouring his armies into Lombardy 



1 ''Ignatius Loyola and the' Early Jesuits,'* pp. 213-214 



AlSD THE UBSULINES, 195 

and uniting his galleys with those of the Turks. Returning 
triumphant from Tunis, Charles V., at the head of 7,000 
choice troops, proceeded to Rome, where he did his best to 
overawe the Pope and his Cardinals, and deported himself 
as if he were in reality the head of the Church as well as 
the arbiter of Europe. But the Pope, who was the Supreme 
Pastor and Father of all Christians, was anxiously casting 
about for some scheme of mediation, some plan by which he 
might pacify the two warring sovereigns, and thus avert 
from Italy and from the Church the manifold calamities of 
invasion by land and by sea, the sacrilegious ravages of the 
Turkish fleets let loose to prey upon both shores of the 
Peninsula, superadded to the butcheries of Henry VIII. in 
England, and the sanguinary dissensions which marked in 
Germany the progress of the Reformers. 

And so Paul III., in his 71st year, and burdened by grief 
and care, had to undertake a long voyage by land to meet 
Francis and Charles at Nice, and there endeavor to bring 
about a reconciliation (1538). Then again the Holy Father 
was endeavoring to remove all obstacles, — and these were 
many and seemingly insurmountable, — to the speedy assem- 
bly of an oecumenical council, in which, he flattered himself, 
the German Reformers could be brought to terms and in- 
duced to return to the bosom of Catholic unity. 

Such were a few of the many obvious reasons why Angela 
Merici's petition was not immediately complied with, and 
why the last years of the laborious life of trial and ex- 
pectancy were somewhat clouded with this supreme hope 
deferred. 

Nor was this the only or the greatest trial which Angela 
had to endure after the establishment of her Company. 
Just as both Theatines and Jesuits, — because they had not 
adopted the distinctive dress and forms of the old Regular 



L 



196 ST ANGELA MEBIGl 

Orders, — were assailed by long, bitter, and most unmerited 
opposition; even so was the Ursuline Sisterhood in Brescia 
reviled by many, because the members were not distin- 
guished by the customary religious habit, nor bound by the 
usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, or compelled 
to live together in community. Even before the formal es- 
tablishment and official recognition of the Company, the 
rigorous formalists had sneered loudly enough, at Angela and 
her attempts to conciliate the freedom of a secular life be- 
neath the paternal roof, with the practice of the austere vir- 
tues and difficult duties of the Religious state. The sneers 
reached her ears, but moved her not. Remonstrances also 
came; but were set aside with that gentle and courteous 
firmness which ever won her the respect and affection of 
those whose opinion she had to reject. Even though it had 
not been given to the humble Foundress to witness the rapid 
increase of the Company and the immense good it was doing 
in the diocese of Brescia, she was too deeply convinced of its 
being the work of God to be affected by mockery, reproach, 
remonstrance, or unworthy aspersion. So, wholly intent on 
forming her daughters to all manner of godliness, of so fill- 
ing their souls with an absorbing devotion to the DivinQ 
Majesty that they should deem no sacrifice great enough to 
glorify and serve Him, — she allowed the idle murmurings of 
the few discontented outsiders to pass by her with the same 
indifference with which she heard the rain-drops pattering on 
the window-panes of her lowly home at St. Afra. 

The whole machinery of her government worked so 
smoothly, the entire Ursuline Family was so knit together by 
themotherly love and watchful tenderness which she and the 
Lady Directresses displayed in their management, — that all 
serious-minded ecclesiastics as well as laymen could not help 
saying, " The hand of God is here!" 



AND THE UBSULINES, 197 

Of course, the constant application demanded by the care 
of so large a body of young women dispersed over an en- 
tire city, an entire diocese, did not induce Angela, though 
long past her sixtieth year, to mitigate the uniform austerity 
or her own private life, or to abridge her long prayerful 
vigils. The Holy Spirit had said to the Israelites through 
Moses' what the Master repeated to the enemy of all holi- 
ness and self-denial:^ '' Not in bread alone doth man live, but 
in every word that proceed^th from the mouth of God.'* 
The manna of the Old Law was but a figure of that of the 
New, in which the Giver bestows Himself in His gift. But 
the near communion with that covered and veiled Presence, 
only prepares the believer for the unclouded contemplation 
and the blissful possession of the Divine and Infinite Reality* 
How can we, who firmly believe in these most consoling 
facts of our Holy Faith, wonder that men and women so 
forget themselves and all their bodily needs, while convers- 
ing in prayer, with Him, or prostrate m adoration at His 
feet in holy communion, as to need no other sustenance than 
that of His near and blissful Presence? Of how many saints 
do we not read, that they could live for weeks and months 
on the sole Eucharistic Bread? Moses, — so the Scripture af 
firms, — conversed forty days on the mountain-top with the 
Lord, and felt no bodily hunger the while. And Elias, the 
mighty prophet, journeyed forty days amid the fearful soli, 
tudes of Southern Palestine, sustained by the single cake 
of bread the Angel had brought him. We read of one of 
Angela's own contemporaries, — whose holy life shed its 
splendors on Rome: — "When our Father was dead, we pro- 
ceeded to embalm him as well as we could, . . and this 
caused greater wonder and edification; for his stomach and 



1 Deuteronomy, viii. 3. » Matth. iv., 4. 



198 ^^^' AJSGELA MEEICl 

abdomen were empty and shriveled up, whence his phys- 
icians judged his abstinence to have been great in former 
times, and his fortitude also, since in so much weakness he went 
about his laborious duties with such constant serenity. When 
they examined the liver, they found three small stones, 
which testified how true was what the good old man Diego 
d'Eguia said, that certainly for a long time past our Father 
was kept in life by a miracle. I, at least, cannot guess how, 
with a liver so diseased, he eould have lived in a natural 
way, if God our Lord had not provided for this organic dis- 
ease, and kept him in life while he was necessary to our 
Society!"^ 

Yes, — to see God face to face, to love and possess Him se- 
curely^ and to sound forth His praises in one eternal heart- 
song, this is the food of the Blessed above, the true life of 
the everlasting Kingdom. And why should not those who 
here below solely seek Him and His justice, — as the flower 
seeks the pure air and the sunlight, not have such a sweet 
and protracted foretaste of the eternal fruition, that they 
seem to be raised above the need of bodily sustenance? 

Even so, most actively devoted to every duty of her high 
office to every detail of her administration, did Mother 
Angela, — as she was then called, — live on through these 
closing years of her life. Nothing could persuade her to 
give her attenuated body rest, or to abridge her long 
meditations. But there were many among her daughters 
who knew well from what well-spring she drew the waters 
of life which strengthened and intoxicated her, or enabled 
her to go forward without fainting or faltering to the 
Mountain of God, where alone she could rest. 

About the beginning of Spring, in the year 1539, however, 

* Father Polanco's letter recounting the death of St. Ignatius Loyola,— quoted by 
Stewart Rose, 



AJSD THE URSULINES. I99 

a low fever seized upon the weakened and aged frame. She 
struggled in vain against the lassitude and sense of oppression 
it caused. Her accustomed manner of seeking sleep, by sit- 
ing on a low bench and leaning back against the bare wall, no 
longer reposed or refreshed her. She had been forced, of 
late, to seek the luxury of lying down on a poor pallet; — she 
would have none other. But she was at length induced to 
accept a bed. The consulting physicians, knowing the purity 
of her blood and her habitual abstemiousness and austerity, 
did not think, at first, that the feverish symptoms threatened 
anything serious. She, apparently, knew better* 

True mother as she was, in her absorbing love for her 
charge and her all-embracing forethought, she did not want 
the direction of the Company to remain for a single hour in 
the hands of such as she now was, sick and prostrated by 
utter debility. She forthwith summoned to her bedside the 
Lady-Directresses and her secretary, Gabriel Cozzano^ and 
bade the latter draw up an act appointing as her Yicar in the 
government of the Company, the Countess Lucretia Lodrone. 
The choice was one which gave universal satisfaction, and the 
Lady Catherine Meia was immediately named by the Saint 
and elected by those jDresent to fill the new Vicar's vacant place 
among the eight Lady-Directresses. Thus relieved from the 
burthen of immediate care, Angela was able to dictate to her 
secretary, Gabriel Cozzano, two of the most touching and 
pregnant documents ever bequeathed to a Religious Order, 
by its founder. One of these is a series of half-counsels, half* 
injunctions addressed to the Lady-Counselors (^^?;^5a^r^c^^), 
whom Angela to the end designated as Colloiielli, — because 
they were, in her thought, to be, each in her own district, the 
leaders and advisers of the Ursulines therein residing, under 
the control of the Lady-Directresses. This most important 
document we shall give presently. The other is addressed, as a 



200 ^^ ANGELA MERICl 

kind of spiritual last will and testament, to the Vicar and the 
Lady Directresses; and this shall be given in its place, after 
we have told of the Saint's death and burial. For, according 
to the most reliable authority, it was only after the funeral 
that Cozzano read this testament to the ladies for whom it 
was destined. 

In the uncertainty regarding the precise date when Angela 
felt her end approaching, — or rather, was assured of it by a 
special warning from on high,^ — we may be nearest to the 
truth in assuming that with the beginning of January, 1540, 
it became apparent that she could not last much longer. 

Unwilling to wait till the last day and the latest hour to 
give her daughters the solemn instructions demanded by 
her very peculiar, — and, as it appeared to many, precarious, — 
position, she called the Lady- Counselors or ColonelU to her 
poor room at St. Afra, and, when tlie first greetings and 
inquiries were over, she desired Cozzano to read in her name 
the precious instructions, destined to remain for all time the 
living and eloquent expression of her motherly tenderness, 
provident care, and superhuman wisdom toward those who 
glory in being her children. 

" Sister Angela, unworthy handmaid of Christ Jesus, to 
her beloved Daughters and Sisters, the Lady-Counselors 
( ColonelU) of the Company of St. Ursula. 

" May the strength and true comfort of the Holy Ghost 
be with all of you, that you may thereby be enabled to bear 
and execute manfully and faithfully the task which you have 
undertaken, — and may also look forward to the great reward 
which God hath prepared for you. 

'' Let each one of you earnestly apply herself within her own 



1 Doneda positively asserts that St. Angela knew of the day of her death by revelation. 
This knowledge is not inconsistent with the facts related by other historians. There 
is only confusion in placing them. 



xliYD THE UR8ULINES. 201 

district, to be both faithful and pains-taking for the welfare 
of her Maiden charge, all of whom have been committed to 
your care, as to that of guardians, watchful shepherds, and 
efficient ministers. Hence it is that you have a great need 
of continual prayer, in order to obtain from God that He 
may enlighten you, direct you, and show you clearly what 
it is incumbent on you to do, for love of Him, toward the 
fulfillment of your trust, — a trust than which none can be 
more exalted, smce it consists in being the guardians of those 
who are affianced to the Most High God. Hence also arises 
the reason for your conceiving a lofty esteem for them; for 
in proportion to your respect for their quality will be the 
love you bear them; and the more you will love them, the 
greater will be your care and watchfulness. Thus will it 
become an impossible thing for you not to bear about you, 
night and day, the image of each one of them, as if it were 
attached to your breast, imprinted on your very heart; for 
such is the effect of true love. Far from being averse to 
such a task, you should, on the contrary, give God most 
heart-felt thanks for your being of the number of those whom 
He chooses for the burthen of government and the keeping 
of His dear treasures. This is both a great favor, and a most 
enviable lot, if you would only learn to prize it! Nor must 
you lose heart if you think that you have neither the knowl- 
edge nor the practical wisdom required by so special a gov- 
ernment as ours. Place your hope and firm trust in God; 
He will surely help you in every difficulty. Be instant in 
praying to Him, in humbling yourselves before His Almighti- 
ness; for most assuredly, since He hath trusted this undertak- 
ing to you, so will He give you strength to carry it out, pro- 
vided only that you fail Him not. Do your duty, therefore, 
go about your active functions, be full of trust, of courage, 
of high hope, send up your heart-cry to God in your need; 



202 '^T. ANGELA MEEICI, 

and doubt not but you will see Him do great tbings for you, 
while you will aim at doing all things for the praise and glory 
of His Infinite Majesty, and for the spiritual welfare of the 
souls dear to Him. 

'^Among the other duties, which you have to accomplish 
with the aid of God's grace, — I entreat you all and beseech 
you by the Passion of Christ and that of His Blessed Mother, 
to do your best to put in practice these few Advices which I 
trust to you to carry out after my death. They will at 
least help to remind you somewhat of my intentions and 
wishes. Thereby, too, I shall know if you take pleasure 
in doing me a grateful thing: for you are well aware that, 
presently, I shall enjoy a fuller life than I did while among 
you, and that I shall see more clearly and value more ac- 
curately and gratefully the good deeds I shall always behold 
you performing; and that I shall have both a greater will 
and a greater ability to assist you, and to do you service in 
every emergency. 

"Fb'st Adi^ice. — I therefore remind you above all things, 
Daughters and Sisters mine in the blood of Christ Jesus, to 
bestow your utmost effort with the help of our Lord, in 
penetrating yourselves with this deep and humble conviction, 
that you are not worthy to be Superiors and Officers, but 
hold yourselves as the poor servants and handmaids of your 
Sisters; considering the while that you are more benefited 
by the services you render them, than they are by your 
government of them; for God might, have provided them 
with more efficient instruments of His loving care than you 
know yourselves to be. His Fatherly mercy deigns to use 
you for your own greater good, that you may acquire a 
larger store of nierits in the sight of His infinite liberality, 
and thus furnish Him a motive for bestowing a fitting 
reward. Lay to heart the lessons taught by our de^r 



AlilD THE URSULINES. 203 

Lord during His life on earth, where he labored as a servant, 
obeying His Eternal Father down to His dying day. There- 
fore did He say, ^ Which is greater, he that sitteth at table 
or he that servethf^ (St. Luke xxii. 27). Which means 
* I have been with you as one who was the servant of his 
brothers, not as one Avho received service from them.' And 
St. Gregory the Great, Pope as he was, always styled him- 
self ' the servant of the servants of God.' He so discharged 
his oiSce as superior and Supreme Pontiff, that in his heart 
he esteemed himself the least of all men, really the servant 
of all God's servants, bearing constantly in mind the wordg 
of the Gospel: He that is greater among you, let him becom9 
as the younger, (Ibid. 26.) In like manner must you, for 
the very reason that you know you are placed over others, 
esteem yourselves as their inferiors. For this very reason 
God will raise you up in proportion to your self-abasement. 
Therefore, too, is it that all true servants of God will never 
fail to abase themselves in their own heart, and to trample 
under foot and destroy all feelings of self-esteem and the 
natural yearning to be extolled by others. They set their 
hearts on the solid delight arising from the true glory and 
unfading honor which they expect from the Master, — rely- 
ing on his own words, He that shall humble himself, shall he 
exalted. (St. Matth. xxiii. 12.) 

" Second Injunction, — Be affable and courteous toward 
your dear Daughters, and endeavor to show yourselves and 
to be solely animated by the love of our Lord, as well as 
by the purest zeal for the souls dear to Him, whenever you 
admonish them, or give them advice, when you would per- 
suade them to strive after some good, or to avoid some spirit- 
ual danger. You will effect more by loving words, and a 
courteous manner, than by bitterness, or sharp reprehension, 
which should neyer be used but in extreme necessity, and 



204 ^-^- ANGELA MEBICl 

with a prudent regard to the place and time, as well as to 
the disposition of the person addressed. True charity, which 
aims in all things to honor God and to be useful to souls, 
knows how to teach this practical discernment; — it impels 
the heart to be, according to the necessities of time and 
place, now affable and courteous, now sharp and stinging, 
with a proper measure in gentleness or reproof, as need may- 
be. Whenever you see a weak soul, timid, and disposed to 
lose hope and heart, comfort her, give her courage, open up 
to her the bright vision of God's infinite mercies, and enable 
that shrinking heart to open itself wide to the sweet influ- 
ences of consolation. On the other hand, when you meet 
with a presumptuous soul, who follows the dictates of a lax 
conscience, without much fear or compunction, — then must 
you fill her with salutary terror, with a just apprehension of 
the rigorous judgments of the Most High, with a sense of 
the dreadfully contagious nature of sin, with a great fear of 
the pitfalls which beset the sinner's path, and a dread of the 
awful uncertainties of this mortal life, — recalling ever to 
mind the inspired warning: JBlessedis the man that is always 
fearful; but he that is hardened in mind shall fall into evil. 
(Prov. xxviii. 14). 

^' Third Injunction. — Be subject to the head Mothers, whom 
I leave in my place, for this is but right. Wherefore, what- 
soever you do, do it in obedience to them, and not as follow- 
ing the bent of your own will. In obeying them you obey 
me; in obeying me, you obey Christ Jesus Himself, who, in 
His boundless condescension hath chosen me to be, in life 
and in death, the Mother of this glorious Company, — albeit 
on my part I was most unworthy; and who, moreover, after 
choosing me, bestowed on me the grace to govern it in ac- 
cordance with His holy will. 

^' Should it so happen that you find any just cause for oppos- 



AND THE URSULINES, 205 

ing or censuring these Superiors, do it with great delicacy 
and reverence. And if they should not yield to your repre- 
sentations, bear the disappointment patiently, convinced that 
simple justice demands of you to love your Mothers when 
they are good; and when they chance to be otherwise and 
differ with you, then must you bear with them; be careful 
never to give way to murmuring, or complaint, or to speak 
ill of them to any one, above all to your Daughters. On the 
contrary, maintain the honor and reverence due to your 
Mothers, considering that it is God's command, that we should 
honor not only our fathers and mothers according to the 
flesh, but still more so our Spiritual Parents. Thus will you 
succeed in always raising them high in your own esteem and 
respect^ but more so still in that of your own dear inferiors. 
When you are blessed with good Superiors, bethink you that 
you do not deserve to have them; and when they are not 
what they ought to be, reflect that they might be still worse. 
When in your heart you feel sure of having some reason 
to be dissatisfied with them, you can without scruple 
speak of it, under the seal of secrecy, to some pious 
and trustworthy person. Wh^n, however, you clearly 
see that there is any danger to the souls or honor of 
your Daughters, you must on no account remain passive, 
or indifferent, or afraid to offend others by your inter- 
ference. In all these things proceed advisedly and with 
due deliberation. 

''Fourth Admonition, — You must show solicitude and 
watchfulness in taking cognizance of all that relates to the 
conduct of your Daughters, and inform yourselves of their 
spiritual and temporal needs. Provide for their wants to the 
best of your power, in order to throw as little of such bur- 
den as possible on the shoulders of the Lady Directresses. 
If, however, it be not in your power to provide the needful. 



206 ST' ANGELA MERICl 

have recourse, and that without delay, to the head 
Mothers, and expose to them fearlessly the wants of your 
little flocks. Should they be slow to act on your representa- 
tions, speak to them again and again. And on this point I 
bid you to be importunate and exacting. For, should any 
soul in your charge be lost through your neglect, God will 
call you to a strict account for it on the Day of Judgment. 
Wherefor-e, you must know and hold for certain, that He 
will never fail to provide you with all that is necessary 
both for body and soul,— if you are careful to do 
your part well Whence too, since it is God who has 
established this Company, even so will He never forsake 
it, in accordance with the words of Scripture: I have 
not seen the just forsaken, no7* his seed seeking bread, (Ps. 
xxvi. 25). 

^^Fifth Admonition. — Be pleased to go often (according as 
you have time and convenience), especially on Feast Days, 
to visit your dear Daughters and Sisters, and to greet them 
in all kindness, to see how they are, to comfort them, and to 
encourage them to persevere m the manner of life they have 
chosen, to excite to a desire of the heavenly joys and pos- 
sessions, to look longingly forward to the joyous feasts and 
unspeakable delights of the City of God, to its blissful and 
everlasting triumphs, and to tear themselves away from the 
love of this pitiful and treacherous world, where no one can 
find either true rest or contentment, but only empty delu- 
sions, bitter labor, and everything miserable and paltry. Put 
them in mind of their obligation to lead at home lives regu- 
lated by good sense, and distinguished by prudence and 
modesty. Let them be well-mannered and temperate in all 
things. Let them take food, and drink, not for the pleasure 
of the appetite, but simply to sustain nature, and enable 
themselves to do God's work. Let them be moderate also 



AND THE URSU LINES. 207 

in their sleep, giving to it the time required by necessity; 
and so in laughter, let it be decorous and subdued; in hearing 
others discourse, let them never listen to anything that is 
not modest, and proper, and to the purpose; and so in their 
own discourse, let their conversation be instructive and 
courteous, not harsh or rude, but gentle and peace-loving 
and charitable. Tell them, that it is my wish, wherever 
they happen to be, that they should give good example, 
charming all by the sweet odor of their virtues, show- 
ing obedience and submission to all who have authority 
over them, and zealous to promote good feeling and 
peace everywhere. Above all, let them be humble and 
affable, and let holy charity regulate their whole bear- 
ing, their every action and word, and let them bear every- 
thing patiently; for with these two virtues, — charity and 
patience, — one is sure to crush the head of the enemy lying 
in wait for souls. 

'^And when you visit them. Ibid you, in rny name, to greet 
them and take them by the hand. Tell them also that my 
desire is that they should maintain great union and mutual 
harmony, all of them bending their wills to the one pur- 
pose of standing together obedient to the Rule: that the 
one thing most important of all for them, is to cherish the 
honor of Christ Jesus, to whom they have promised both 
their maidenhood and themselves; and so they must place 
their hopes and their love in God alone, and in no living 
creature. Give these dear ones comfort and courage, and let 
them be of good cheer! For you may also give them these 
glad tidings, which I announce to them from Christ and our 
Blessed Lady, — that they have great cause to exult and make 
holiday in their hearts, inasmuch. as in Heaven for all and 
each of them in particular is prepared a new crown of glory 
and bliss, — provided only that they keep themselves firm and 



208 'ST. ANGELA MEBIGIy 

immovable in their holy purpose, and strenuously observe our 
Rule. Of this assured prospect let nothing make them 
doubt, no matter what may be their trouble or difficulty; for 
all these little miseries will soon vanish from their path, 
and be succeeded by serenity and joy; and, then again, 
the little we may have to endure in this life is as nothing 
in comparison to the wealth of happiness stored up in 
Paradise. 

" Besides, let them hold this too for most- certain, that 
they shall never be forsaken in their necessities. God will 
provide for them in a wonderful way. Let them never lose 
heart or hope. How many Nobles, Queens, and otlier ex- 
alted personages are there not, who in spite of all their 
treasures and powers, are not able to find any sweet comfort 
in the hour of their most extreme need. And yet their 
poorest dependents can enjoy abundant consolation and 
cheer! ... 

" Assure them, moreover, of this, — that I shall, by and by, 
be more truly living, than I was when their eyes beheld me 
in the body, and that soon I shall see them and know them 
better, and be better able to help them, inasmuch as I shall 
be always in their midst with Him who is my Love, who is 
the Love of all of us. Wherefore, as they believe all this, 
let nothing damp their courage or dim their hope. Thus 
must you enlarge upon the promises made to your Sisters^ 
resting in the assurance that the realities will more than 
correspond to their expectations, — and this do ye particularly 
in favor of such as you may find desponding, wavering, or 
pusillanimous. 

*' Tell them that they must wish to see me, not on earth, 
but in Heaven, where our Love is. Let them place their 
hopes on high, not on the things of earth. Let Christ Jesus 
be their only treasure; since the object oi their affectioQ 



AND THE UESULINES, 209 

must be sought for, not here below, but in the highest 
Heaven, where He thrones at the right hand of His Father. 
Hence the Apostle said; If you be risen with Christ, seek the 
things that are above : where Christ is sitting at the right 
hand of God, (Coloss. iii. 1.) 

'' Sixth Injunction, — You must so live and demean your- 
selves, that your conduct shall be a mirror for your dear 
Daughters. Whatever, then, you would have them do, that 
do yourselves first. What weight can your reprehensions or 
admonitions have, if the fault you would correct is but too 
apparent in your own conduct? How can you counsel or 
persuade them to the practice of virtues, which you evidently 
lack yourselves? At least must you, to make up your 
deficiency, begin to work in earnest with your Sisters. Let 
your conduct, therefore, be such as may move and encourage 
them in the pursuit of virtue. Nor must you fail to shape 
your lives so as to conform with them in all praise-worthy 
and virtuous actions befitting your profession and within 
your power, especially in your outward bearing, in the 
practices of frequent Confession and Communion, and other 
such good works. It is but right and proper that Mothers 
should be models and mirrors to their Daughters, — particu- 
larly in blameless life, and modest carriage, as in all other 
things which regard exterior life. 

^^ Seventh Reminder. — Bear in mind that it is your duty to 
protect and rescue your lambs from wolf and thief, — that is 
from two classes of pestilential persons, namely, — fair- 
speeched worldlings and hypocritical religious, on the one 
hand, and heretics on the other. In the first place, regarding 
your intercourse with the worldly-minded, — be especially 
averse to any kind of familiarity with young men, or indeed 
with men of every age, no matter how spiritual-minded they 
may be. For too great a familiarity with even the spiritu^- 



210 ST, ANGELA MEBICI, 

minded, leads to anything but to spirituality. You must not 
allow them to keep up any acquaintance, so far as you can 
with women who lead an aimless life, with such as show 
themselves averse to purity, or who are fond of gossiping 
about frivolous things, or enjoy nothing but worldly amuse- 
ments. See to it, also, that no Confessor, or Religious, shall 
cause them to make little of any of their holy resolutions, — 
of their customs of fasting, or their settled purpose of keeping 
their virginity inviolate, or their attachment to this holy 
Rule of ours, divinely prepared for us; or of any other such 
things. For there are many persons who, under some 
specious pretense of seeking a higher good, will turn away 
the mind of poor young girls from following up their own 
virtuous inspirations and resolves. Now, as to guarding your 
charge from the contagion of heretical opinions, whenever 
you learn that such a preacher or other public personage has 
the reputation of entertaining heretical opinions, or that they 
preach novelties in contradiction to the settled doctrines of 
the Church, or in opposition to what we have been teaching 
you, — then must you take means to prevent your Daughters 
from hearing such doctrines. For it not unf requently happens 
that certain little seeds of doubt cast into the mind, become 
so deeply rooted there that they can scarcely be plucked out. 
With all such persons you must have no familiar dealings. 
Leave these men to go their own road; and, while abstaining 
from judging any one rashly, be prudent in guarding your 
own souls from evil. For it is better to follow the beaten 
path where you apprehend no danger, than to expose your- 
selves to pitfalls on a road untried. Follow ever the broad 
highway of the Church's teaching and practice, laid out and 
perfected by the hands of so many saints under the direction 
of the Holy Spirit. 

" Live yourselves a new life. As to the doctrines which 



AND THE VE8ULINE8, 211 

^^ 
originate in our day, or which may arise hereafter, let them 

pass by like clouds borne along by the winds; they do not 
concern you. Meanwhile, pray, and make others pray, that 
God may not forsake His Church; but that it may please 
Him to reform her as best beseemeth Him, and as He shall 
judge more conducive to our good, to His own greater honor 
and glory. Indeed, in these times, so pregnant with 
danger and with moral pestilence, you can find no better 
refuge than at the feet of Christ Jesus. If He directs 
and teaches you, you shall be well taught indeed, as the 
prophet says: Blessed is the man whom Thou shalt instruct^ 
O Lord, and shalt teach him out of Thy laid (Ps. xciii. 
12.) Humble yourselves beneath His mighty hand, and 
you shall find the light and joy mentioned by the same 
Prophet: Enlighten tny eyes that I may never sleep m death, 
(Ps. xii. 4.) 

^^Eighth Reminder, — Show an equal love to all your dear 
Daughters, nor must you permit yourselves to show partial- 
ity to any in preference to the others. For all are what God 
made them, and you know not what glorious use He may 
yet make of them. How can you tell but those very persons 
who seem to be of little account, or even utterly worthless, 
are not about to become the most generous and the most 
acceptable to His Divine^Majesty? Besides, to whom has it 
been given to read the hearts and penetrate the secret thoughts 
of His creatures? Take them all to your heart, therefore, and 
bear with them all tenderly; for you have not been appointed 
to judge God's handmaidens. He alone knoweth what His 
own purpose is: He can from the stones of the street create 
children worthy of Himself. As for you, do what your office 
enjoins: correct your dear ones lovingly, charitably, when 
you see them falling through human infirmity. Thus will 
you continue to prune the vine committed to you by our 



213 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

Lord; leaving the result to Him, who will bide His own time 
to do wonders for you. 

^^Last Reminder, — The last word of prayer which I address 
to you, and which I could write with my own blood, is that 
you continue to be bound together in so sweet and loving a 
union that all have but one heart and one will. Yes, — let 
the bond of charity so draw you to each other, that you 
may prize and esteem each other, help each other, and 
support each other in Christ Jesus. If you are earnest in 
your endeavor to be thus united, doubt not but our Lord God 
shall be in the midst of you. You shall have as your pro- 
tectors our Blessed Lady, the Apostles, the entire company of 
blessed men and women, with the Angels, the whole Heavenly 
City, and the whole order of this Universe. For such is the 
eternal law of our Creator, that all those who labor unitedly 
for His honor, shall prosper in everything, that their efforts 
shall be crowned with success, inasmuch as they have with 
them God and all His creation. You may thus admire the 
wonderful effects of union and harmony of wills. 

"Wherefore you must desire it, seek it, cherish it, and 
hold it fast with all your might. I assure you, that if you 
thus stand together with united hearts, you shall be like a 
mighty rock or tower, impregnable against all the ill fortune, 
the persecutions, and the Satanic assaults of the future- 
This, moreover, I assure you of, — that every grace you may 
ask of God shall be infallibly granted to you, and that I 
shall be always in your midst, assisting you to obtain the 
object of your prayers. 

"Exhort and encourage your dear ones, therefore, to carry 
out the undertaking we have begun; and in so doing, cheer 
each other with the assurance that all things shall most 
certainly turn out for you as I now say. Beside the immense 
and priceless grace which my love as well as your own, will 



AND THE URSULINES. 213 

grant you when death is nearest, — for true friendship is 
best known in the extremity of need, — hold this also for 
certain, that in that hour especially you shall know me to be 
a true friend to you. 

"And now 1 leave you. Be comforted, and have a lively 
faith and hope. I wish you to be blessed, In the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 
Amen." 



OHAPTEE XV. 

THE GATES AJAR — LOYE STRO:S^G Iiq" DEATH — THE PILGRIM 

AT REST. 

Very few death-bed scenes in the history of the holy found- 
ers of religous orders approach in touching solemnity and 
deep interest to that presented in the poor narrow room at St. 
Afra's, where lay, near the end of her long pilgrimage, the 
parent of the most numerous and wide-spread order of 
women in the Church — the first of their sex specially devoted 
to the great apostleship of education. The only change 
allowed in the poor and scant furniture of this lowly dwelling 
— which Angela was allowed to occupy by charity — was the 
little bed rendered necessary by the exigencies of her long 
illness, the rush-pallet introduced as a first modification of 
the sufferer's austerity in the beginning of her sickness, and 
now probably used as a luxury by the faithful Barbara 
Pontana, and the crowded woodeiv benches on which sat the 
sorrowing daughters of this great Mother of saints and 
missionary nuns. 

One may easily picture to one's self the pious emotions of 
the lady-counselors who had been from the beginning among 
the most tried and trusted helpmates of the foundress in 
spreading and strengthening her institute. It is not unlikely, 
too — although no mention is made of the fact by Father 
Salvatori, — that the lady-directresses were also present ; for 

2U 



ST, ANGELA MEIilCL 215 

the admirable advices and directions contained in the Eicordi 
are more precious than gold or the choicest pearls to all who 
are charged with the government of others. Gabriel Cozzano 
liimself^ identified as he was with the labors, the fears, the 
hopes, the successes, and the joys of Angela and her company, 
could not help drinking in every one of the inspired lessons, 
which his own ear had first heard from the lips of his saintly 
friend, and Wtich his own hand had put in writing for the 
benefit of all after ages. 

We must not forget amid what disheartening prospects 
Angela beheld her little company as the shadows of death 
were gathering around herself. Of the wars — the insane, 
fratricidal, and ruinous wars — between the two greatest 
princes of Christendom, which broke out with renewed fury 
at this time, like the sudden eruption of a volcanoes long pent- 
up fires, we need say nothing. All Brescia — all upper Italy 
indeed — was in an agony of the most terrible expectancy. 
From the horrors of war, however, Angela most probably 
knew, in the prophetic light vouchsafed her so abundantly as 
the eternal day drew near, that Brescia and her dear ones 
would be safe. But there were other — less apparent and 
more formidable- — perils for the members of her company, of 
which she had a vi vid consciousness. The nascent Ursulines 
were to be assailed, both from within and from without, by 
the same enemies and the same dangers, which went so near, 
— at the very same time, too — wrecking the Society of Jesus 
under Claudio Acquaviva. But nearer to Angela, around her 
very home, in the public squares and streets of Brescia, within 
her monasteries as within the homes of her patricians, nu- 
Tueroas enemies were lurking, who were lying in wait for the 
faith of her daughters, and most anxious to overturn from its 
founjdations^ the edifice of virginal life and missionary zeal 
which the Maid of Desenzano had been instrumental in rais- 



216 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

ing. In 1540 nearly one half the population of Brescia 
either belonged to the Protestant faith or was disposed to 
adopt it ! And the dying saint, from her death-bed near the 
watch-towers of the ancient Celtic city, could see the new 
doctrines spreading over Lombardy, Venetia, and Piedmont, 
like the resistless waters of the Po and Adige, swollen by the 
wintry streams from her own native hills, inundating and 
devastating Italy's fairest and most fruitful regions. 

One half of Brescia Protestant ! What a light this simple 
fact throws on the fervent admonitions addressed to the lady- 
counselors to protect their young flock of maidens from this 
rising flood of heresy and the consequent heretical hatred of 
the virginal life and all that bore the semblance of monastic 
institutions ! Surely, even in this nineteenth century, and 
in every land under the heavens, it is daily becoming more 
and more a matter of vital importance to guard the young 
from these '' little seeds of doubt cast into the mind, and be- 
coming so deeply rooted there, that they can be plucked up 
only with the utmost difficulty.^' Surely, in these days of 
independent thought and scorn of all religious authority, even 
young children will understand how much wiser it is " to 
follow the beaten path where no danger can be apprehended, 
instead of the untried road among pitfalls and precipices" I 
And how timely is the advice to " follow ever the broad high- 
way of the Church's teaching and practice, in which so many 
saints walk before us" ! 

What strikes one as most precious in these reminders of a 
dying saint and foundress are the beautiful and most practical 
lessons on the lofty esteem in which they should hold their 
own institute and the virginal life which is its immediate 
purpose and the mainspring of its efficiency ; the absolute 
trust to be reposed in the Divine aid, and the no less absolute 
humility and self-denial which must be characteristic of 



AND THE URSULINES, 217 

their service toward the Divine Majesty ; and then the un- 
limited and unwearied charity with which they must cultivate 
the happiness and spiritual interests of their flocks of devoted 
maiden souls. 

One is apt — in a self-seeking and sensual age, amid a society 
where the sweet ties of parental love and filial duty are daily 
and hourly growing weaker, and becoming, like obsolete 
statutes, things of the past, lifeless and without any practical 
virtue — to fancy that of all places in which the counterpart 
of the home affections ought to prevail, monasteries are the 
last ; and that nowhere would one be less disposed to seek for 
the perfection of parental piety than in the bosom of a 
cloistered or even an uncloistered nun. Yet here we have 
the practical injunction of the sweetest, the most delicate, 
and the most self-sacrificing motherly tenderness inculcated 
and enjoined by the holy Maid of Desenzano ; and we may 
be sure that the Ursulines who have inherited her spirit never 
could have covered both hemispheres with their teeming 
houses, did not that angelic motherly love still govern the 
breasts of the sisterhood and influence the souls of their 
countless pupils. 

It is, however, of that motherly tenderness so necessary in 
the heart of the superiors of a monastery, and so much needed 
by their inferiors, that we wish to speak here. In no family 
or household in the world outside of the cloister do the 
inmates need and crave such kindness, such loving care, such 
unvarying patience and gentleness, a tenderness so deep and 
true and exhaustless, as they do within the cloister itself. If 
superiors who read this will only remember their own need 
in the past, and the vain yearnings for a true mother's heart 
to lean upon, and the unsatisfied want of the true maternal 
instincts ever inseparable from patience, gentleness, and 
devotion ! 



218 JST, ANGELA MERICI, 

Listen rather to that wonderful woman— whose life seems 
to have been one continuous and successful effort to stifle all 
the dearest sentiments of her sex and to crush within her 
heart all the most sacred family affections — listen rather to 
that heart, as, like a fountain unsealed, it pours forth as with 
a mighty rush of water the tide of its hallowed womanly 
charity. 

The trust committed to these lady-counselors is to be ^^ the 
guardians of maidens who are affianced to the Most High 
God. ... It will become impossible for you not to bear 
about with you, night and day, the image of each one of 
them, as if it were bound to your bosom or imprinted on your 
very heart. . . . Penetrate yourselves with this deep con- 
viction, that you are not worthy to be placed over others ; but 
rather you should deem yourselves the poor servants and 
handmaidens of your sisters. ... Be gentle and courteous. 
. . . You will effect more by loving words and gentle 
courtesy than by bitterness and sharp reproof, which should 
never be used except in extremity. Whenever you see a weak 
and timid soul, . . . comfort her, give her courage, . . . 
open up to her the bright vision of God's mercies, and enable 
that sensitive and shrinking heart to open all its avenues to 
the sweet influence of consolation. . . .'' 

Angela left her daughters uncloistered, scattered through- 
out their homes in the city ; some of them were but poor 
seamstresses, or servant-girls toiling hard for their masters, 
and sanctifying their respective households by the example of 
a pure life and a generous piety. The lady-counselors are to 
make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the most needy, 
whether spiritually or otherwise — with those, more especially 
still, whose great need puts the life of body or soul in peril. 
That need must be supplied instantly. Where the counselors 
are helpless to provide, they must apply forthwith to those 



AND THE URSULINES. -219 

above them. ^^ On this point I bid you to be importunate' 
and exacting/^ says the great motherly heart. '' Should any 
soul in your charge be lost through your neglect^ God will 
call you to a strict account for it on the Day of Judgment. 
. . . For, hold for certain that He will never fail to provide 
you with all that is necessary to both souls and bodies.'^ 

As to the young maidens themselves, who are members of 
the Order, or postulants on trial, no matter how highly or 
lowly born, ^^ Tell them," the dying parent says, ^Hhat it 
is my wish, wherever they happen to be, to give good ex- 
ample, charming all whom they meet by the sweet odor of 
their virtues, showing obedience to all who have authority 
over them, and zealous to promote good feeling and peace 
among their friends." It is on record that these early 
disciples of Angela Merici were perfect models of all the 
filial virtues in the homes where they continued to reside. 
The noble Brescian families, as well as those of the burgess 
class, who gave their darlings to the company of St. Ursula, 
were amply rewarded by the untold blessings which these, 
in return, brought to the paternal fireside. The Company 
spread and took such deep root in Brescia and its territory 
only because every man, woman, and child within it had 
daily and hourly experience of the beautiful lives and heavenly 
virtues of these modest followers of the Maid of Desenzano. 

" Tell them also," their venerable Mother says, " that the 
one thing important above all others is to cherish the honor 
of Christ Jesus, to whom they have promised both their 
maidenhood and themselyes. On Him alone must they build 
their hopes and place their affections. . . . Let them take 
comfort and aourage ! . . . For you may impart to them these 
glad tidings, which I bring them from Christ Himself and 
our Blessed Lady — that they have good cause to exult and to 
make holiday in their hearts, inasmuch as in Heaven for all 



220 ST. ANGELA MEUICl 

and each is prepared a new crown of glory and bliss — pro- 
Tided only that they remain immovably firm in their holy 
purpose, and strenuously observe our holy rule. . . • Assure 
them moreover of this — that I shall presently be more truly 
living than when they saw me in the body, and that soon I 
shall see them and know them better, and be more able to 
help. For then I shall be in their yery midst with Him who 
is not only my Love, but the Love of all of you. ..." 

When Secretary Cozzano came to the last ^^ Eeminder,'* 
Angela sat up in her bed, not only that she might catch 
every word more distinctly, but that she might so remember 
this concluding paragraph as to repeat it to her daughters 
when the Secretary had finished. The feelings which the lady- 
counselors labored to restrain, as every portion of the touch- 
ing paper was read to them, became uncontrollable toward 
the close. It might well seem to them as if they stood at the 
gate of Heaven, with its portals ajar, ready to receive their 
worshiped Mother, and the light from within streaming out 
on them. So divinely did she speak of their dignity, their 
duties, their assured reward, and the promise given to the 
foundress, that the company should " ever be like an un- 
shaken rock, and a tower which no enemy could ever possess ;" 
while, beside the continual presence and aid of Christ in 
their midst. His love and the motherly care of Angela herself 
should be more particularly shown to each of them in her 
dying hour. 

They had to restrain their tears when Cozzano had con- 
cluded. For Angela, summoning all her remaining strength, 
and uttering every word with glowing face and a tongue on 
fire with the charity of the other life on which she was enter- 
ing, spoke so firmly and so fervently, that she seemed to pour 
her own soul into theirs. 

One, in reading of such a scene, is reminded of the two 



ANB THE URSULINES, 221 

great prophets of Israel at its darkest hour — Elias ascending 
to Heaven in a chariot of living flame, and Elisaeus gathering 
up his master's cloak with the inheritance of his God-like 
spirit, and gazing upward at the receding figure of the divine 
man, while he bethought him of the Israel of Achab and 
Jezabel, God-forsaken and plunged in the most fearful 
idolatry. 

The daughters of St. Angela present at her death-bed could 
not help feeling that their parent spoke in God's own name ; 
that their calling was indeed from God ; that the great insti- 
tution they were laboring to complete was truly the work of 
the Most High ; and that the promises so explicitly and so 
solemnly made and reiterated by the dying saint would be 
realized both with regard to the permanence of the company 
of St. Ursula, and with regard to the special assistance guar- 
anteed in life and death to its faithful members. 

^Everything was supernatural in this interview between 
Angela and the lady-counselors. Not that the sweet and holy 
emotions of natural love and gratitude found no vent there, 
but that the tears which were shed and the grief felt and ex- 
pressed at parting with one who had been most truly the 
mother of their souls, was so tempered and brightened by the 
almost heavenly atmosphere of that poor bare sick-room, and 
by the sensible nearness to the blessed company of the ever- 
lasting city, that earth was forgotten in the light of Heaven, 
and filial sorrow swallowed up in the great flood of joy aoid 
hope which lifted upward all their hearts. 

It would appear that the energy with which Angela spoke 
while repeating the last '' Eeminder'^ and the motherly bene- 
diction on her dear ones was such that she seemed to them 
to be, for the moment at least, restored to her former 
strength. Both directresses and counselors went away from 
St. Afra's with the hope that a life so precious would be 



222 ST. ANGELA MEBICl, 

spared to them yet awhile. Such was also the impression 
produced on the attendant physician^ Dr. Gardoni. Among 
the citizens of Brescia, howeyer, there was produced by the 
rumor of the saint's danger a feeling akin to consternation. 
They had been so long familiar with the modest and gentle 
presence, had so of ten experienced the benefit of Angela's wise 
and heavenly counsels, had found her so true and helpful a 
friend in their sore need, so safe a confidant and guide in 
their troubles and doubts, and the families of high and low 
had been so often blessed by the holy influences which she 
and her daughters brought with them in their visitations, 
that to lose her now was to lose the common parent of poor 
and rich alike. 

As we have already seen, from the very first beginning of 
Angela's stay in Brescia (1516) the reputation of her sanctity 
and wisdom was such that her advice was eagerly sought by 
persons of every class. She thenceforth became the spiritual 
guide of all persons who aspired to a life of greater perfec- 
tion — to the young and old of her own sex particularly. 
The long years which elapsed, and the dreadful misfortunes 
and vicissitudes which befell Brescia in the interval and up 
to 1540, instead of diminishing her influence over minds and 
hearts, had only endeared her more with every successive year 
to the entire city, and had only served to increase the uni- 
versal veneration felt toward her. 

We have said '' universal veneration," for even those who 
were led astray by the doctrines of Luther and Calvin were 
so convinced of Angela's superior merit and extraordinary 
virtue, that they approached her as they approached, in the 
church outside of Brescia, such men as Cardinals Contarini, 
Pole, Caraffa, de Tiene, and such saints as Philip Neri and 
Ignatius Loyola. The historians of that age inform us of the 
repeated attempts to enlist, under the pretext of reforming 



AND THE URSUZmES. 223 

the Church, such great men as these in the unholy rebellion 
which made reform a by- word of scorn and derision. 

Even at the present day, in spite of the fearfal inroads 
made by radicalism and impiety among- the inhabitants of 
Upper Italy, the entire city and territory of Brescia are yearly 
moved by the* return of the anniversary of Angela Merici's 
death, city and country pouring forth their population around 
her tomb in St. Af ra. But we are anticipating. 

During the whole period of her illness her lowly abode 
near that venerable church was beset daily by anxious visitors.* 
Two in particular are mentioned by Father Salvatori — the 
Cavalier James Chizzola and Signer Thomas Gavardi. Both 
had, as they afterward testified, been much benefited by her 
counsels and direction ; they now came to seek a last advice 
from one whom they believed to be led by the Spirit of God. 
Sitting up in her bed, as her two noble friends besought this 
last favor from her, she first addressed herself to Chizzola, 
seting forth, with an eloquence and cogency of argument 
which he had never before witnessed in her exhortations the 
duties of the true Christian man. Her yery fervor, however, 
exhausted her, and when she turned to Gavardi she could 
only say, with an air and an adcent that stamped every word 
on his soul forever after, WJiatever you would wish at your 
dying liour to have done in health, that do noio while you may ! 

There were others besides the two gentlemen present who 
heard these words and were deeply moved by them. More 
than one took them to heart and began to lead a truly Chris- 
tian life. They were repeated abroad in the city, and fell, 
like the dew from heaven on the parched earth, on many a 
needy soul, sinking deep into generous hearts, and helping to 
reform the course of more than one erring life, or to spur to 



1 BeUa vita di S. Angela Merici, vergine Bresciana, E. Girelli, pp. 169-171. 



224 ST, ANGELA MEBICT, 

nobler effort and higher aims those already on the right road. 

How long an interval elapsed between Angela's last con- 
ference with the lady-counselors and her death, has not been 
explicitly stated by her biographers. The testament, ad- 
dressed to the lady- directresses, had been, according to some 
writers, intrusted to the Countess Lodrone, as soon as the 
latter had accepted the charge of Mother Vicar. This testa- 
ment was to be communicated to the proper persons only 
after Angela's death. As to Angela herself — without repel- 
ling from her door or her bedside the friends and acquaint- 
ances who came to see her for the last time, or to hear her 
loYcd Yoice once more, or without refusing to receive such of 
her daughters as yearned for a last interview with their 
mother — she intimated her desire that the members of the 
Company should not quit their post of duty to satisfy even 
these cravings of a grateful love. But she alloAved free access 
to all other persons, mindful to the last of the golden rule of 
true piety and Christian charity, that one may leave God's 
presence in prayer to find Him equally present in the needy 
souls who seek one's aid. So, ardently as she wished to de- 
vote to communion with Him alone the brief interval that 
separated her from the Judgment, she continued to be in 
death what she had ever been in life — the ever-ready and most 
patient counselor of those who sought her guidance. 

But one can scarcely form a conception of the holy fire 
which filled her heart and served to chasten still more, amid 
her bodily ills, the pure soul which had been chastened by 
more than half a century of suffering and voluutary cruci- 
fixion. "With that sovereign reverence for her virginal body 
which the Christian doctrine and practice inculcate, she 
would allow no hand to touch it save her own as she prepared 
it for its supreme repose in the sepulchre. It is said that on 
the eve of her death, dismissing even Barbara Fontana from 



AND THE URSULINES, 225 

her room, and shielding herself from every mortal eye, she so 
prepared and decked herself, that it only needed her poor 
Franciscan habit to be ready for her place in St. Afra. And 
there she lies at this day, as she had laved and vested to 
meet the Heavenly Bridegroom. ^ 

It would appear that some anxious visitor knocked at the 
closed door while Angela was thus decking herself for death's 
bridals, and when admitted expressed surprise to find her 
able to leave her bed. When Barbara Fontana returned with 
such of her sisters and Angela's lady friends as were admit- 
ted with the former, they too could scarcely help chiding the 
brave-hearted sufferer for what they considered an act of im- 
prudence or even foolhardiness. But she had been so well 
accustomed through life to rise above every bodily weakness, 
that even in death she seemed to make the sinking flesh do 
the will of the spirit. 

She told them, however, that death was at hand, and with 
an air and in a tone that dispelled all doubt and hesitation. 
It was time to administer the last sacraments and divinest 
consolations of religion. So Extreme Unction washed away 
every vestige of soil contracted by these unwearied feet in 
their many pilgrimages, every stain which might have re- 
mained on her hands, even when breaking daily and hourly 
the bread of charity to God's poor, or while binding up the 
inveterate wounds of others. And into the temple of her 
virginal body, thus anointed anew for the coming of its Lord, 
Christ Himself came in His last gift to mortal man. Holy Vi- 
aticum, the bread of the traveler about to cross the boundary 
between this vale of tears and the land of the living. 

To Catholics who believe in the Divine Eeality of this great 
central sacrament, the veiled presence consoling, cheering. 



1 Salvatori, p. 119. 



226 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

and fixing our hearts on God during this life of faith and 
trial, it. scarcely needs to be told with what transports the 
saints and all holy souls approach the mercy-seat on our altars 
during their pilgrimage here below. But when the end has 
come, when faith is about to give place to the clear vision of 
God, souls like Angela Merici, who had made of prayer and con- 
templation their daily bread, who had knelt before our taber- 
nacles as if the treasure these contained were visible m its 
divine form to them, must see with a keener sense as they 
stand within the first beams of the coming brightness. To 
those who have lived a life of sensual enjoyment, m conform- 
ity with the instincts of the natural man, the clear-sighted. 
ness vouchsafed to ^Hhe pure of heart'' while still in the 
body is a thing absolutely incomprehensible. But when 
these pure hearts, cleansed from the very last alloy of earth, 
gaze, at the very verge of eternity, on the face of their Em- 
manuel, their hidden God, through the thin and wasted 
shreds of their mortality — as one beholds the face of the rising 
sun through the veil of the morning — are they not filled with 
ecstatic joy, as every instant brings the unclouded form of 
the luminary more distinctly before the eye ? 

^'Writers say'' — such are the words of Father Salvatori 
— '' that at the approach of the Holy Viaticum she appeared 
transformed as with the beauty of Paradise ; and that as 
soon as she had received it she folded her arms as in a trans- 
port of love, breaking forth into the most tender expressions 
of devotion. After having thus entertained for a long time 
her divine guest, like one intoxicated with holy love, she 
summoned around her all the members of her company, and 
addressed them a moving discourse on charity, obedience, 
humility, the faithful observance of the rule, the wariness 
with which they should guard the treasure of their virginity, 
and the love and holy fear of the Most High God, till they 



AND THE URSULIJSfES. 227 

all broke forth into uncontrollable weeping. Then, loving 
mother that she was, she blessed them, and took leave of 
them, saying that on earth they should not meet again, but 
giving them all a rendezvous m Heaven. Having thus ful- 
filled every duty, and feeling that her Beloved was now ap- 
proaching fast, she bade them fetch her habit of a Tertiary 
of St. Francis, and put it on herself. Then, as the tradition 
has it, she arose from her bed, and lay down on the rush-mat. 
Thus extended on the floor, she forgot everything earthly, 
and, like one in ecstasy, she gave no further sign of seeing or 
hearing what passed around her. Only her eyes, peaceful 
and shining with a preternatural light, remained fixed on 
Heaven, while she was heard from time to time to utter, amid 
her ardent sighs, the sweet name of Jesus. Presently, with 
her face overspread with unearthly joy, she broke forth into 
the dying words of Christ on the cross : In manus tuas 
commendo spiritum meiim.^ She thereupon bowed her head 
on her chest, closed her eyes, and the blessed spirit went 
peacefully forth from its tenement on the 27th day of Janu- 
ary, 1540. It was a Tuesday, about six o'clock of the after- 
noon. ..." 

Thus closed a life marked by obscure toil and suffering ; by 
constant striving, in the face of ever-recurring obstacles, 
after the accomplishment of a mighty enterprise divinely 
foreshown, and rendered seemingly impossible of execution 
by the imperious necessity of adverse circumstances. But, 
while yielding to the misfortunes of the times, the brave and 
faithful spirit continued to hope against hope itself, schooling 
her own mind and heart to the acquisition of supernatural 
wisdom and the practice of the most heroic virtues, leading 
the life of an anchorite in the midst of a crowded city, the 



1 " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit " (St. Luke xxiii. 46). 



228 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

visible providence of the poor and afflicted, the guide of all 
classes and both sexes in the road of Christian perfection, the 
teacher of prelates and priests, the trusted counselor of 
princes, a reformer who shone by the unearthly splendor of 
her own heroic generosity and self-denial in the age of a false 
and calamitous Kef ormation — a great missionary, though but 
a poor, single-handed girl, in the midst of a population demor- 
alized by such a fatal succession of wars as the world had not 
seen since the age of Attila, and in comparison with which 
the wars of the First Napoleon were only a thunder-shower 
in a summer sky. 

No : not merely a missionary, and working single-handed 
to reform an age more unfortunate than guilty, and to re- 
store the bright days of early Gospel faith and enlightened 
piety among a people blessed above all others by the lavish 
hand of nature and nature's God ; but who were the victims 
of domestic political passions which they neither shared nor 
could control, and of the most unholy foreign ambitions be- 
gotten by the very sight of their most beautiful country. 
Angela Merici was an apostle, the first of a class of apostolic 
women sent to educate the youth of their own sex at the be- 
ginning of an era hostile to all the divine teachings of Chris- 
tianity, and thereby to save the society of the future just as 
the floodgates of Socialism and Communism were about to let 
loose on Christendom that deluge of error which threatened 
the foundations of the family home and of all social life. 

In the pictures at Brescia and elsewhere in Upper Italy, 
painted too in the sixteenth century, the vision in which St. 
Ursula and her band of virgin martyrs appeared to the Maid 
of Desenzano, is so represented that Angela, kneeling, re- 
ceives a standard from Ursula's hand, while around the kneel- 
ing figure are a numerous train of followers. If we may look 
upon the three centuries and a half which have now elapsed 



AND THE URSULmES, 229 

since that lowly death-bed scene in Brescia as embodying the 
realization of Angela's vision or dream, we cannot help 
being struck by the fact that, while the company founded 
by* the Maid of Desenzano was the first established for 
educating female youth, other holy women, following 
her example, have founded similar societies, each at present 
vicing with the Company of St. Ursula in numbers, zeal, and 
efficiency. 

None the less to that sweet and heavenly form lying low 
in death beneath the shadows of St. Afra's Church is due 
the leadership among this glorious band of apostolic women, 
educators of youth, and destined to be, in the hand of God's 
Church, the most successful agents for saving society and the 
moral world. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A saikt's testame:n^t akd legacies — A people's geati- 
TUDE . A:NrD ye:n^eratiok — ikcorruptio:n" lastii^-g 

THROUGH centuries. 

In some biographies of St. Angela the reading of the testa- 
ment intrusted to Mother Lucretia Lodrone is deferred till 
the conclusion of the last solemn obsequies, which only took 
place several weeks after her decease. They also separate the 
testament itself from its proper place in the narrative, and 
oblige the reader to seek for it in an appendix. Assuredly, 
one so wise as Lucretia Lodrone, and who knew so intimately 
the intentions of her saintly friend, could have deemed no 
time so opportune for the reading of the document as that 
immediately following her own and her sisters' bereavement, 
and no place so suggestive of heroic resolutions and generous 
sentiments as the room in which lay all that was mortal of 
their worshiped parent. 

We can, therefore, assist in spirit at this meeting in the 
death-chamber of the nine women to whom Angela Merici had 
given, while she was still among the living, the grave re- 
sponsibility of continuing her own divinely-appointed work, 
and of imparting a final and perfect shape to an institution 
from which Christendom was to derive such abundant and 
lasting benefit. 

Here is this last will and testament^ translated as closely as 

230 



8T. ANGELA MERICL 231 

the sense would permit from the original presented to the 
Eoman tribunals during the process of Angela's canonization, 
and transcribed faithfully by Father Salvatori : 

'^ Testament draivn up ly St, Angela during lier last illness^ 
and addressed to the Lady-Directresses of the Company. 

'' Sister Angela, unworthy servant of Christ Jesus, to my 
Lady the Countess Lucretia, Head Mother of the Company 
of St. Ursula, and to the other Directresses and Mothers, 
the noble matrons Lady Genevieve di Luciagi, Lady Maria 
di Avogadri, Lady Veronica di Bucci, Lady Ursula di Gavardi, 
Lady Jean di Monti, Lady Isabella da Prato, Lady Lionella 
di Pedeciocchi, Lady Caterina di Mei. May the everlasting 
blessing of the Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
be upon you all ! Amen. 

^^As it has pleased God, Sisters mine most dear to my 
heart in the blood of Christ Jesus, and Mothers worthy of all 
honor, to choose in His eternal counsels from out this vain 
world many persons, virgins especially, to form this Company 
of ours, and as it hath also been His pleasure, in the immensity 
of His goodness, to select me to co-operate with Him in this 
great work, without considering how incapable and unworthy 
a servant I was ; even so hath He deigned, as is the wont of 
that same goodness, to bestow on me the necessary graces and 
gifts enabling me to govern in accordance with His will and 
to provide for the manifold needs of my charge — particularly 
hath He vouchsafed the grace of directing and maintaining 
them in the manner of life to which they have been called. 
But among these gifts and needful provisions made for me by 
the Almighty, you are one of the most precious : you who have 
been found worthy to be the true-hearted mothers of so noble 
a family, a family placed in your hands that you may cherish 
and care for its members as if they were your own proper 



232 ST. ANGELA MEBIC% 

children — indeed, to show them a greater love, if such be 
possible. And here I wish you to consider most attentively 
how great a favor and high an honor God hath vouchsafed to 
do you, by making you the parents of so many virgins, and 
by placing in your hands and committing to your faithful 
care these souls affianced to Himself. What reason have you 
not to thank the Divine Majesty, and to beseech Him that 
just as He hath been pleased to place you at the head of 
this great flock, even so it may please Him to grant you the 
wisdom and strength necessary toward fulfilling your charge 
with honor to Him, and with perfect fidelity to your own 
obligations ? It behooves you, therefore, to come to a 
generous and firm determination to accomplish most perfectly 
His holy will ; to accept with a living and firm faith the task 
imposed on you by His love ; and, come what may, to persevere 
to the end in your glorious labor. Above all things, I pray 
and beseech you by the Passion and Blood of Christ, to take 
to heart with all earnestness the execution of these few dying 
injunctions, which you may see written down here one after 
the other. I am now leaving this life, and put you in my 
place, so that these counsels of mine shall be like bequests 
made to you, my heirs, which, being the expression of my last 
will, I leave to you to execute faithfully. 

'' Eirst, and principally, therefore, beloved Mothers and 
dear Sisters in Christ, endeavor with the help of God to con- 
ceive and cherish in your hearts the purpose of taking on 
you this charge and its cares for the sole love of God and the 
pure zeal for the salvation of souls. Thereby the whole course 
of your labors and government will be like a tree planted and 
rooted in this twofold love, incapable of bearing any but the 
sweetest and most healthful fruit. Our Lord hath said it : 
A good tree cannot Iring forth evil fruit (St. Matt. 7 : 18) ; 
that is, the soul and will aflame with charity and directed by 



AND THE URSULINES, 233 

it, can only bring forth good and holy deeds. This also is 
the reason why St. Augustine says, Ama, et fac quod vis ; 
' Only love, and then do what you will ; ' as if he said. Only 
fill your soul with that supernatural love and charity, and 
you cannot help doing well ; or as if he said more openly. 
Perfect charity cannot sin. 

'' Second Bequest, I next beseech you to bear not only in 
your mmd, but graven on your heart, all your daughters, and 
each one of them in particular ; not their names merely, but 
their quality, their natural disposition — all that concerns each 
one, in a word. Nor will this be difiicult if you love them 
truly. For it is the nature of true motherly love among 
persons of the world, that if a parent had a thousand sons 
and daughters, she would have all and each of them perfectly 
present to her mind and heart. This is the law of love. 
And experience proves that the more children one has, the 
greater grows for each the parent's loving care. How much 
more so, in the spiritual order, can and should Mothers such 
as you manifest a like love of their dear ones. Supernatural 
love is incomparably stronger than that of nature. Where- 
fore, dearest Mothers, if you only love these dear daughters of 
ours with a lively and heartfelt love, it will become impossible 
for you not to have their images deeply imprmted on both 
heart and memory. 

'' Third Bequest. In the third place, I ask of you as a 
favor to attract and direct these dear ones with the gentle 
and loving hand of motherly tenderness, instead of treating 
them haughtily and rudely ; under every circumstance be 
gentle and courteous to them. Listen to the Master, saying : 
Learn of Me, lecause I am meelc and Jiumlle of heart (St. 
Matt. 11 : 29). Of the Almighty Creator and Ruler it is also 
said, that He ordereth all things siueetly ; and the Master 
says of Himself : My yoTce is sweet, and My durthen light 



234 ^2: ANGELA MERICI, 

(Ibid. 30). Thus it behooves you to employ the utmost 
gentleness. Above all, take care never to use compulsion. 
God hath made us all free-willed, and to no one's free-will 
doth He do violence. He leads them to obey Him by show 
of reason, by inviting motives, and by gentle persuasion. 
Thus, doth He say in the Apocalypse : / counsel thee to luy 
of Me gold -fire-tried, that thou mayest he made rich (3 : 18). 
^I counsel thee/ He says; not ^I compel thee.' On this 
point, however, I do not wish to be understood as blaming 
reproof unqualifiedly ; for both reprehension and sharp 
correction may be required in certain circumstances, and 
prove useful at times to certain persons. Only, in order to 
make them useful and seasonable, one should be moved by 
charity and by zeal for the spiritual welfare of souls. 

'' Fourth Bequest, You must be desirous and zealous to 
see your daughters clad with the beautiful vesture of 
innocence, and adorned with all manner of virtues, that so 
they may find grace in the eyes of Christ Jesus, their Spouse. 
More particularly, still, must you see to it that they do Him 
perfect and chaste service by every act of theirs, by their 
modest and gentle bearing, by their reserve and prudence, 
their patience and charity. One sees mothers in the world 
bestow so much care and earnestness in dressing and adorn- 
ing their daughters, to make these pleasing to their suitors ; 
and the more these earthly lovers are elevated in rank, the 
more pains do such parents take in adorning their dear ones, 
suiting the artificial graces with which they set forth their 
charms to the personal taste of him whom they want to win. 
Indeed, these mothers seem to make their happiness consist 
in having daughters worthy of such courtly suitors, and place 
their hope on the friendship and favor these will show them 
for love of their daughters. Wherefore, bethink you how 
much more zealous you ought to be concerning the spiritual 



AND THE URSUZmES. 235 

loveliness of these maidens of yours, who are lifted up to the 
heavenly rank of affianced brides of the eternal Son of the 
Most High God ! Oh, what honor and dignity are yours to 
be thus the rulers and Mothers of these brides of the King 
of kings, and to stand in the relation of parents to the Son 
of God, drawing His favors down on yourselves through your 
daughters ! Yes, most happy will it be for you if you show 
yourselves prompt and eager to feel and assert this new and 
singular rank bestowed on you. 

*^ Fifth Bequest. In the fifth place, when it happens that 
you have kindly admonished three, or at most four times, 
any one of your subjects, without finding in her any disposi- 
tion to obey, then let her alone, and send to her neither 
Counselor nor other visitors. For this neglect may induce 
the poor culprit to conceive regret for her obstinacy, as well 
as a more fervent desire to remain and persevere in the Com- 
pany. One reason why God banished Adam from the earthly 
paradise was that his isolation should force him to acknowl- 
edge his fault and, do penance for it. Should any one of the 
maidens thus left to herself desire to return and manifest sorrow 
for her fault, you must receive her on the condition that she 
shall ask pardon of all of you, as well as of her own Counselor, 
and let her, in expiation, fast one Friday on bread and 
water. 

'^ Sixth Bequest. In the sixth place, when you find a 
young person so vain of her personal appearance as to have 
great difficulty in laying aside her pretty head-dress or other 
trifling ornaments, this should make you conceive but a 
feeble hope of her persevering in such a life as ours. For if 
she is unable to make such trifling sacrifices as these, how 
can she be expected to have strength for far greater ? How- 
ever, there is need of discernment in such cases. For it may 
happen that a soul who thus yields to her inclination in some 



236 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

trifling matter, will afterwards in all other difficulties show 
superior generosity. 

" Seventli Bequest. Seventlily, you must endeavor to as- 
semble the Counselors {colonnelli) once or twice a month, and 
consult with them, examining with great care the details of 
your administration, especially what the Counselors may lay 
before you with regard to the conduct of your daughters, to 
their circumstances, their bodily and spiritual necessities, so 
that you may provide for all as the Holy Spirit shall direct 
you. 

" Eighth Bequest, You must also be careful to call your 
daughters together from time to time, in such place as you 
may deem best or most convenient, and there, when you 
have at hand a proper person, give them the benefit of 
a short sermon or exhortation. Their meeting each other 
thus, will enable them to greet each other like true sisters, to 
converse about their spiritual concerns, to exchange con- 
gratulations or- consolations, as the case may be, and thus to 
go back home greatly delighted. 

" Ninth Bequest, You should know that, had it not been 
both useful and proper for our Company to possess any source 
of revenues, our Lord would not have begun to provide us 
with them. Wherefore I advise you to be in this matter good, 
prudent, and true Mothers, employing these revenues for 
the welfare and increase of the Company, in conformity with 
the dictates of your motherly love and prudence. On this 
point I wish you not to seek counsel from outsiders. Do 
what is needful among yourselves alone, being directed by 
your charity and the light of the Holy Spirit, aiming in all 
your measures to procure the spiritual benefit and advance- 
ment of your daughters — not only for the purpose of inciting 
the existing members of the Company to a greater love of their 
vocation and to a stricter obligation to be perfect, bat also to 



AND THE URSULINES, 237 

attract to you a fresh accession of numbers. For the chari- 
table use of wealth, that which is acceptable to God, consists 
in bestowing pecuniary aid and showing real kindness where 
by so doing souls can be saved from sin or dangerous habits, 
or induced to practise virtue or to contract good habits, or 
again to seek a higher degree of spiritual advancement. 
Thereby the almsgiver in a manner forces the recipients to 
act in a certain manner and in a given direction, as it pleaseth 
him : just as we see a young girl in the world who consents 
to receive presents from another contract the obligation of 
so pleasing that person that she may no longer say him nay. 
In like manner, neither more nor less, presents and alms well 
bestowed attract and impel the recipients to the practice of 
virtue, and bind them to persist therein. Keep to these well- 
tried methods, and they shall not lead you astray. 

'^ Tenth Bequest. I entreat you from the bottom of my 
heart to keep an anxious and watchful eye on all these sub- 
ordinate guardians of the holy flock I intrust to your keeping. 
Be careful that no discord or uncharitableness shall grow up 
among them ; be especially so to preserve them from every 
breath and taint of heresy in this pestilential age. Remember 
that the devil never slumbers, but evermore seeks our ruin 
under a thousand disguises. "Wherefore keep a strict watch, 
and take particular pains to maintain among your flock union 
and harmony of wills, as we read of Christians in the primi- 
tive Church, that the multitude of lelievers had hut one heart 
and one soul (Acts 4 : 32). Such must you endeavor to make 
the union between yourselves and your daughters. For the 
more united you are the more will Christ be with you, ful- 
filling the office of Father and Good Shepherd. Indeed, you 
can have no surer mark by which you may know if the 
Company has the grace of God, than in this mutual love and 
close union of its members. Christ Himself hath said it : By 



238 ST. ANGELA MERIGl 

this shall all men hnoiu that you are My disciples, if you have 
love one for another (St. Jolm 13 : 35). So, then, mutual 
love and union of wills are an infallible sign that the road we 
follow is the good road — that which leads to God ! "Where- 
fore, dear Sisters and Mothers, be watchful here. The enemy 
will cover his snares with the fair appearance of good. So, 
as soon as you perceive the first sign of mischief, hasten at 
once to guard against it with all the energy God may give 
you. Do not allow the baneful seed of disunion to take root 
for one moment among you ; it would injure your credit in 
the city as well as beyond it. Disunion in every corporate 
body means dissolution and death. Our Saviour hath said 
it : Every Icing dom divided against itself shall he made 
desolate (St. Matt. 12 : 25). 

^' Last Bequest, In conclusion, make it your highest 
care that the ordinances made for you, especially all the pre- 
scriptions of our Eule, shall be scrupulously obeyed. Should 
the lapse of time or other circumstances render it necessary 
to make new ordinances, or to change in aught your manner 
of doing things, make the change warily and with the aid of 
wise counsel. Let your main resource in all emergencies be 
to go to the feet of Christ Jesus. There superiors and sub- 
jects must unite in fervent prayer to Him. For, most 
certainly. He will be in the midst of you ; He will enlighten 
you and teach you — true and kind Master as He is — what 
it behooves you to do. Of this be firmly assured, that this 
Eule of ours comes immediately from His hand, and that He 
will not forsake this Company so long as this world lasts ; for 
if He has had the chief share in establishing it, who can ever 
overthrow it ? Trust to Him ; doubt not ; and believe with 
an unwavering faith that this shall be as I say. I know what 
I am saying to you : Blessed are those who really lose their 
own mind on this matter. 



AND THE UBSULINES. 239 

"If yon are faithful to act in this way in these and similar 
circumstances^ under the direction of the Holy Spirit and in 
conformity with the need and gravity of the times, I bid you 
to rejoice and to be brave of heart. Lo, great is the reward 
prepared for you ; and where the daughters will be there shall 
be the Mothers. Be comforted and doubt not ! We should 
wish to see you in our midst in Heaven, even as our common 
Love will have it ; and who may withstand Him ? His light 
and the sweet splendor of His truth shall surround you in 
the hour of death, and shall deliver you from the hand of 
the enemy. So, then, persevere joyously and faithfully in 
the work you have undertaken. Beware, beware, I say, of 
yielding to tepidity. Every promise which I make you shall 
be fulfilled with overflowing measure. Now I am about to 
depart ; and you must, within the interval, do what you have 
to do. I embrace you all and give to all the kiss of peace, 
beseeching God to bless you. In the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Ame7i.'' 

The Company of St. Ursula over which Lucretia Lodrone 
now found herself placed numbered one hundred and sixty 
members. Their field of labor, so far, did not extend be- 
yond Brescia and its suburbs. Within these limits their 
virtues and services were familiar to every household. The 
death of their parent was, therefore, a subject of general 
regret and admiration : of regret for the loss of one who had 
long been revered as a public benefactress and a shining model 
of the highest Christian perfection ; of admiration, because 
all the circumstances of her saintly death only served to bring 
before the mind of the Brescians these supernatural qualities 
of purity, charity, forgetfulness of self, unbounded devotion 
to the good of others, of masculine courage and endurance in 
a weak and aged woman, of extraordinary knowledge and far- 



2:1:0 ST, ANGELA MERIGI, 

seeing prudence both in tlie things of God and the concerns 
of every-daj life : in a word, of angelic goodness and almost 
divine wisdom in one who had lived and died a poor Tertiary 
Sister of St. Francis. 

They knew instinctively — as indeed all true Christians do 
— this good people of Brescia, what constitutes true sanctity ; 
they had seen more than one saint in their midst or in their 
near neighborhood during Angela's lifetime. All the declama- 
tions or insidious calumnies of the emissaries and adepts of 
Calvinism had not yet succeeded in persuading them that 
the Church of Italy was not fertile in saintly men and women. 
And a quarter of a century's intimate acquaintance with 
Angela Merici's person, with her comings and her goings, 
and with every detail of her labor among the sick, the poor, and 
the young, every feature of her obscure life of prayer, poverty, 
and self-denial, had only convinced them beyond all possibil- 
ity of doubt or error, that the Maid of Desenzano was most 

truly A SAIKT. 

And, now that the angelic spirit had gone to join its kin- 
dred hosts on high, there was nothing to prevent the thou- 
sands of town and country who cherished her name from 
paying the lifeless remains the honors due to a saint. The 
emaciated frame, clad in the poor brown Franciscan habit, 
lay on the rush-pallet where she had breathed her last. The 
sweet, modest face, beautiful all through life, but most beau- 
tiful in death, seemed still to wear the ecstatic smile with 
which the Holy Xame and the last sacred words were uttered. 
And, although the eyes were closed, one could fancy that they 
looked upward toward the eternal hills over which the true 
day-dawn was breaking, and that a faint reflection of its 
splendors rested on the calm and pallid features. 

She had, with her own hands, decked herself for the long 
sleep in expectation of the Resurrection Day. Her daughters 



AND THE URSULINES, ' 241 

had not even to cross her hands on the virginal bosom : they 
had been meekly folded there when the last prayer was ut- 
tered ; they only had to close the eyelids. There she lay, 
from the first moment of her repose, as she has lain ever smce 
in her tomb at St. Afra's, no matter how costly the structure 
and its ornaments, in her brown Franciscan habit, with her 
pilgrim's staff by her side. 

The pilgrimage was over at length ; the weary feet would 
travel no more. With what transports of mingled sorrow 
and joy did Lucretia Lodrone and her companions kneel in 
succession to kiss these feet which had trodden the hill-sides 
of Bethlehem, the streets of Jerusalem, the ascent to Cal- 
vary, the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre, and all the foot- 
prints of the Saviour in and around the Holy City ! These 
poor, cold, motionless feet had, like those of the Master, been 
unwearied in seeking out the stray sheep of His flock and 
bringing them back to the fold, or in marking out for souls 
athirst of perfection the steep and rugged paths that lead to 
sanctity. 

And while the daughters of Angela Merici Avere thus satis- 
fying their own instinctive feelings of veneration for the 
departed, others were thronging to the well-known door to kiss 
these same feet and gaze upon the transformed features of their 
benefactress, their counselor, their guide. Prelates, priests, 
monks, nobles, burgesses, tradesmen and laborers, ladies of 
the most exalted rank, and the poor seamstresses and servants 
whom Angela was wont to console, to cheer, to teach, and to 
guide toward all good — they came streaming in all day and 
all night, day after day, and night after night — city-folk 
and country-folk — from Milan and Bergamo and Yerona, 
from Angela's own home in Desenzano and from Salo, which 
loved to claim the holy maid as half her own ; it was pitiful 
to see the poor and the lowly surging around that door and 



242 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

that inanimate body — the sacred tabernacle of a saintly soul ; 
it was glorious to see the heartfelt homage of prince and 
priest^ of the exalted in rank and learning and fame, kneel- 
ing by that poor rash-pallet to honor God's goodness, wisdom, 
and power in His greatest master-work— A saik"T. 

The affluence was so great from the very first announce- 
ment of Angela's death, that, to prevent accident, to afford 
an easy access to the ever-increasing throng, as well as to 
snow proper respect to the departed, the body had to be re- 
moved to the adjoining Church of St. Afra in the evening: of 
the 28th. This removal was effected in the most solemn 
Dfianner, amid an immense concourse, the ladies putting on 
mourning as if for one of their nearest and dearest, the en- 
tire clergy and gentry of Brescia joining in the cortege. 
Brief as was the space which separated the death- chamber 
from the mam portal of St. Afra's, the crowd was so dense 
that those who bore the corpse, and the Sisterhood who sur- 
rounded and followed it, could only move through the surg- 
ing mass with extreme difficulty. Yet there was no dis- 
order ; there was only an intense -desire to cast one look on 
the face of the saintly dead, or to touch even the hem of the 
poor Franciscan habit. And while the solemn chants of the 
church ascended to Heaven, with them mingled the sobs of 
the multitude, the fervent blessings on the blessed departed 
and her sorrowing daughters, and the prayers and loud cries 
of praise which come so warm from the generous Italian 
heart. No earthly prince or potentate could command or 
expect to receive such a spontaneous and fervent homage of 
the deepest and holiest affections of the human soul, offered 
by the united voices of a whole people. 

In the venerable and beautiful church which Angela had 
loved so well in life every altar beheld the Adorable Sacrifice 
offered np for the repose of her soul. The Augustinian Can- 



AND THE URSULINE8. 243 

ons, whom Angela had so deeply trusted, paid to her remains 
and her memory every mark of respect, of veneration even. 
The voice of the multitude inside and outside of the sacred 
edifice ceased not to call her Saint {Beata) ; bishops and 
priests who had long known her echoed the popular Yoice 
with heart and lips. The emotion of the dense crowd who 
filled the church was a something indescribable. It lifted 
one's soul to God, and inspired every heart with heroic reso- 
lutions. The touch of Elisaeus' holy remains recalled to life 
the dead man cast hurriedly into his sepulchre by terrified 
friends ; why should not the near presence of yonder vir- 
ginal body, reminding the worshiper of sixty-five years o'f 
unsullied purity, of heroic deeds of self-denial, self-sacrifice, 
and widespread beneficence, not warm into newness of life 
the tepid bystanders ? How could all these men and women, of 
whatever degree, not feel their hearts beat with more generous 
pulsations as they remembered how much that lowly Maid 
of Desenzano had accomplished, single-handed, for God and 
themselves, and how aimless and barren their own lives had 
been? 

And so, when the Divine Victim had been offered up, 
where she had so often worshiped, they bore her remains to 
the crypt or lower church, known in the city as '' the most 
holy place,'' because there were buried the glorious martyrs 
who, like St. Afra herself, had died in Brescia to bear their 
witness to Christ. 

The entombment, however, was not allowed to be com- 
pleted according to the prescribed legal form. The chapter 
of the Cathedral Church claimed the privilege of possessing 
Angela's precious remains, because she was the foundress of 
an Order, and as such ought by right to be buried in the 
principal church of the diocese. The clergy of St. Afra, 
which was Angela's parish church, had an undoubted canoni- 



244 ST. ANGELA MERICL 

cal right to give her a resting-place within their own pre- 
cincts. And then the Minor Observants of St. Francis could 
urge in their own favor the fact that Angela was a Francis- 
can, recognized as such while living, and in death wearing 
the honored habit of their founder. 

To the superficial reader it may appear an unseemly strife 
— this arising for the possession of the remains of a poor re- 
ligious. But the Church has ever held in such honor the 
bodies not only of her saints, but of all her children. St. 
Paul affirms that the Christian's body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost : ^ if this be true of all the baptized faithful, how 
iriuch more true of these heroic souls who, following gener- 
ously the promptings of the Holy Spirit, lay down their lives 
in glorious witness to the divinity of their faith, or demon- 
strate- that divinity by a long life of God-like abnegation 
and self-sacrifice ! Hence the extraordinary care with which 
the bodies of the early martyrs were buried in some secret 
place where the Holy Sacrifice could be daily offered on their 
tombs. Hence, when persecution had ceased, and men were 
called on not to die as witnesses of the Gospel truth, but to 
live in perfect conformity with its teachings and its Divine 
Ideal, the reverence with which all those who died in odor 
of sanctity were buried near the sanctuary, and, when their 
holiness had been solemnly recognized by the Church, the 
splendor with which their shrines were ornamented. And 
all this because, in the truest sense of the word, these holy 
bodies had been in life the temples of the Holy Ghost. 
Church vied with church, city with city, nation with nation, 
for the possession of these sacred treasures, which were to all 



1 " Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, 
whom you have from God; and [that, therefore] you are not your own ?'' (1 Cor. 6 : 19.) 



AND THE URSULINES. 245 

who approached them in God's house a perpetual exhortation 
to sanctity and Christ-like generosity. 

Angela had, indeed, obtained in 1532 a brief from the 
supreme authorities in Kome, authorizing her to choose the 
place of her burial. It does not appear, however, that she 
had in her last moments either produced the brief or ex- 
pressed any definite wish about its application. When, there- 
fore, it was found and produced, it failed to settle the dis- 
pute. So that a delay of thirty days occurred, and during 
this interval the body remained unburied in the crypt of St. 
Afra's, exposed on a simple bier to the view and veneration 
of the faithful. It was, doubtless, a providential delay. It 
afforded pious pilgrims — and their numbers were countless — 
the opportunity of gratifying their devotion by coming from 
far and near to gaze upon that heavenly face, to kiss the feet 
of the great benefactress of the people, and to touch the hem 
of her Eranciscan robes, as if they knew that a virtue went 
forth from them. It was a species of popular canonization, 
the voice of the people being here, in the true sense, the voice 
of God. The whole of Lombardy and Yenetia seemed moved 
by one mighty impulse to pay this thirty days' homage to the 
dead Franciscan Tertiary, herself the foundress of a great re- 
ligious family**' whose future no one then could forecast. 

And this judgment of the popular mind and heart was 
shared by the high-born, the learned, and the clergy. In- 
deed, it was the fact of her having been in her lifetime uni- 
versally regarded as a saint that had given rise to the edify- 
ing contestation about her place of burial. 

During the first week that the holy remains thus reposed 
in the crypt of St. Afra's, keeping company with the glori- 
ous martyr-band buried there, the city was startled and awe- 
stricken at beholding a preternatural brightness in mid-air 
above the sacred edifice : there it continued during three 



246 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

whole days and nights, shining like a beacon-light to guide 
the multitude to the spot where Angela Merici lay unburied ! ^ 

But there was given to the sorely tried and tempted popu- 
lations of Upper Italy a still greater sign than this radiance 
in the heavens. Throughout these thirty days that the body 
lay exposed to the air, in this low, damp, underground place, 
although no precautions had been taken to protect it from 
the air, and there could have been entertained no thought 
of embalming it, the flesh remained without the least sign 
of corruption, sweet-smelling, fresh-colored, flexible, and 
elastic,^ bearing to all external appearance every sign of a 
living body. Not only was there about it nothing redolent 
of putrefaction, but an aromatic fragrance seemed to ema- 
nate from it and to fill the whole crypt. 

This interval also, Father Salvatori assures us, aflEorded 
the pious artists of Brescia ample time to take plaster casts 
of the saint's features, or to paint her as she lay in the calm 
majesty of death. Thus, many of Angela's noble Brescian 
friends were enable to obtain admirable likenesses of their 
venerated spiritual guide. ^ 

Nor, reflecting on the extraordinary state of incorruption 
in which the body of the saint was found at the end of these 
thirty days, must we imagine either that it could be ac- 
counted for by the state of the atmosphere; or that it ceased 



1 F. Salvatori, p. 125. 2 p. Salvatori, ibid. 

3 The two celebrated Brescian painters, of whom we have already spoken so favorably, 
Moretto and his pupil Romanini, were kept busy at this work in the crypt of St. Afra's. 
To them we are indebted for the only authentic portraits of Angela Merici, as she lay 
thus in life-like death. There is not one of Moretto's beautiful works that does not 
bear some trace of the Christian ideal, which the conversation of such a woman while 
living and the contemplation of her angelic features in death, were so apt to create in 
the artist's mind. From such conversation and contemplation did Giotto, and Fra 
Angelico, and Fra Bartolomeo draw the ideal forms which charm and captivate us in 
their immortal works. 



AND THE URSV LINES. 24:7 

when the final ceremonies of sepulture had been performed 
and dust was returned to its native dust. As we have said, 
the crypt was underground, and very damp ; while the 
crowds of pilgrims who poured in continually increased both 
the heat of the place and its dampness, and could only serve 
to hasten the progress of putrefaction. Incorruptible, how- 
ever, the virginal flesh of the Maid of Desenzano continued 
to remain for more than a century and a half after the inhu- 
mation. Faino, the historian of St. Angela, who speaks of 
what he had seen with his own eyes, affirms that it was free 
from corruption in 1672.' Bonifazio Bagata reaffirmed the 
same fact eight years later,^ adding that the same extraor- 
dinary fragrance which filled the crypt of St. Afra's before 
the solemn ceremony of entombment was still sensible when 
the remains were uncovered. 

So, after the thirty days of patient investigation, the eccle- 
siastical judge gave his decision, and the Canons-Eegular of 
St. Afra were authorized to bury the body of Angela Merici 
where it had been so long lying, in the very place which An- 
gela's own heart had chosen to rest foreyer. Of course, the 
good Fathers were overjoyed to possess all that remained of 
one whom they had known so long and so well, and had 
learned to revere as a saint from the very beginning. They 
made immediate preparations for the funeral solemnities, 
their Superior, Father John Francis Saramondi, setting 
artists to work — Moretto and his scholars, most probably — to 
design a tomb in every way worthy of so great a servant of 
God, and worthy as well of Brescian gratitude and piety. As 
is the wont in Italy, accurate representations of the monu- 
ment, with its mosaics and sculptures, were forthwith painted 



1 Bernardo Faino, a native of Breecia, Superior-General of the Brescian Congregation, 
in his *'Life of St. Angela," published in Bologna in 1673. 

2 Admiranda Orbis Chrisiiani, fol., Venice, 1680. 



248 ST. ANGELA MERIt% 

for trie day of entombment, the erection of the real tomb 
itself in its costly materials being left to the near future. 
Among the devoted friends and admirers of Angela^ beside 
Moretto and his scholars, there were poets also, and they too 
would add their tribute of praise to the works of architect, 
sculj)tor, and painter. Foremost among these was Gabriel 
Cozzano, whose intimate intercourse with the saint during 
the last years of his life had made him love her with a filial 
love full of infinite reverence. Another was Father Valeri- 
ano, of Bergamo, one of ihe Canons-Eegular of St. Afra ; 
and a third was a no less devoted and grateful admirer of the 
saint — the Doctor Zanetti, of Brescia.^ 



1 The Latin verses written for this occasion were afterward engraved on the slab of 
black marble which covered the tomb. They are given by all the biographers of the 
saint, and for this reason they are reproduced here : 

1 Angela virtutum varia redimita corona 

Hie jacet, extremo rcstituenda die. 
Spiritus cethereas penetravit ferv'idus arces, 

Et smnmo ingcnuus astitit ille Deo, 
Ilia hiEC est Virgo, quae morum regula viva 

lllustrem ercxit virginitate chorum. 
Brixia, crede mihi, sacrum venerare sepulchrum : • 

Nil non Sancta, Deo proxima, Virgo potest. 

Behold, deck'd with her varied virtues' crown, 

Here Angela awaits the resurrection morn ; 

The while her spirit 'mid the angelic throng 

Resplendent shines before God's awful throne. 

She is that Maid whose heavenly purity 

Drew Brescia's maids to that angelic band, 

To suff'ring consecrate and innocence. 

Ah, Brescia ! fear not thou to venerate 

Her tomb who, near High God, still pleads for thee. 

2 Proposita Martyr, Virgo actibus, ore Magistra: 

Sic tribus aureolis, Angela, dives ovas. 
Angela, nuper eras morum vita?quc ^Magistra : 
Nunc patriae Tutrix Prsesidiiimque veni. 



AND THE URSULINES. 249 

No one can read these tributes, as well as the authentic 
narratives of all that took place immediately after her death 
and during the interval between her funeral obsequies and 
the final entombment, without feeling convinced that the 
popular conscience proclaimed her a saint, and that the pop- 
ular heart with a resistless impulse paid her the veneration 
due to a saint. 

This sentiment only grew with each succeeding year, and 
was intensified by the miraculous favors which were wrought 
through her intercession by Him who delights in honoring 



A martyr in desire, in life a spotless maid, 

By words and shining acts our teacher thou, 

Angelic woman ! Thus a triple crown 

On high thou bear'st. Angel of earth, thy deeds 

A pillar of fire before us shone. 'Mid Heaven's bliss 

Be still the guardian angel of thy native land. 

3 Angela viva f ui, nunc Angela mortua dicor : 

Sum tamen angelicis Angela juncta choris. 
Vos qui me nostis, exemplo vivite nostro : 
Sic facile ut docui mortua adhuc doceo. 

Angela they named me living ; dead, Angela still 
They call me, though now mix'd with the angel choirs. 
O you who loved me ! I would have you live 
E'en as you saw me 1 so might my life with you 
A speaking mirror be to loving eyes. 

4 Conditur hoc tumulo cui nomen et insuper onmis 

Vita superis asquiparanda choris. 
Angela divlsa est tria per loca : Corpus in urna, 
Spiritus in Coelo, nomen in ore virum. 



This last is from an anonymous pen : 



Within this tomb lies one whose name and life 

Made her most angelic on earth appear. 

Angela our treasure now divided is : 

This urn her virgin body keeps ; her soul 

Shines 'mong the blessed ; and her name 

Is on men's lips where'er they worship God-like deeds. 



250 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

after their death the great servants whose life was devoted to 
the promotion of His glory. 

One display of the divine power, in connection with "An- 
gela's tomb, must be related here, because in this instance 
God vindicated the outraged honor of the Maid of Desenzano/ 
A priest belonging to the noble family of Eossi had come, 
some time in 1571, to visit the crypt of St. Afra and to ad- 
mire the tomb of Angela Merici. He was accompanied by a 
theological student, also of noble birth, but whose name is 
not mentioned by any biographer of our saint, probably 
through respect for the young man's relatives. He was per- 
fectly familiar with the popular veneration toward Angela ; 
he had witnessed the heartfelt piety with which the faithful, 
after worshiping the Blessed Sacrament on the principal 
altar, came to kneel and pray before the shrine of their fel- 
low-citizen and benefactress. He could not help being ac- 
quainted with the leading facts in Angela's history, and with 
the priceless services rendered to Brescia by herself and the 
Order she had founded. Yet, standing before her shrine, 
he examined the decorations and inscriptions with the irrev- 
erent mind of a sceptic and a scoffer. He was one of those 
shallow young men who think they are giving proof of 
superior knowledge and judgment, when they rise above the 
belief of the unlettered crowd, and who deem it a merit to 
sneer where others worship and adore. Most likely our scio- 
list thought that Signer de Rossi was, like himself, too en- 
lightened to pray to Angela Merici. So, after gazing, half- 
amused, at the simple-hearted men and women who knelt, 
wrapped in devotion, before the tomb of the saint, and criti- 
cally reading such verses as we have just quoted, the young 
divine turned to his companion with a smile. *' God only 



* This fact is related at length by F. Salvatori, p. 128. 



AND THE VRSULINES, 251 

knows/' said he, '' whether she merits all this praise.'' The 
words were scarcely uttered when two fearful explosions as 
loud as thunder-claps, seemed to issue from the shrine 
itself, and people started in terror to their feet, as if they 
felt the church falling about their ears. One of the Canons 
who happened to be occupied within the choir in the upper 
church ran down to see what terrible accident had occurred. 
The imprudent young scoffer, however, did not wait for any 
further signs of the divine displeasure, for he, at least, 
needed no explanation of this prodigy. Falling on his knees 
he besought aloud God's forgiveness, and that of God's great 
servant whom he had dared to asperse. His shallow scepti- 
cism was changed into sincere veneration, and, let us hope, 
he lived to be a better and a wiser man. 

The shrine, with its architectural and artistic decorations, 
remained in the state in which they had been completed till 
the year 1580, when the renovation fever seized upon the 
good Fathers of St. Afra. After disfiguring the upper church 
in conformity with what they deemed the rules of classical 
art, they resolved to repair or to disfigure the crypt also. 
The remains of Angela, as well as the relics of the ancient 
Brescian martyrs, were taken from their place of rest while 
the work of restoration proceeded. The good Canons wished 
to erect new shrines more in keeping with the piety of the 
people and more worthy of the sacred treasures they were to 
contain. An appeal was made in particular to the Ursulines 
of Brescia, and a modest sum, proportioned to the means of 
a poor and growing community, but suflBcient for the pur- 
pose in an age when money was scarce and artists and work- 
men still labored for the love of God and His saints, was 
placed in the hands of the Canons. 

On the north side of the large chapel dedicated to St. Calo- 
cer the builders constructed a monumental tomb ot whitei 



252 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

marble^ of good design for the age, adorned with sculpture 
and painting. On the pediment was inscribed in gold letters 
the following distich : 

Conditur lioc 'cere tumiilo Angela : quid ni? 
Terrain terra tegit ; spiritus astra tenet,^ 

The tablet bearing this inscription is supported by two 
angels kneeling with their faces bent reverently toward the 
tomb beneath. The shrine proper, placed within the thick- 
ness of the wall, was ornamented externally by Moretto's 
beautiful j)ainting, in which the entire figure of the saint 
was shown in profile, as she lay on her death-bed. When it 
became necessary to show the body of the saint, this orna- 
mental painting opened out on hinges, and from the thick- 
ness of the wall was drawn forth a metallic chest containing 
the precious remains. On removing the lid, these were seen 
enclosed in crystal. In recent times — since the canonization 
in 1807, most likely — a more convenient disposition of these 
relics has been adopted. The body is placed in a shrine be- 
neath the altar, raised a few feet above the floor, and sur- 
rounded by a crystal frame longer than the body, which thus 
permits the latter to be seen by the pilgrim. 

A living writer who visited Brescia in 1867 ^ thus speaks 
of the present condition of St. Angela's tomb and remains : 

'' On the very evening that I arrived in Brescia I went to 
see the saint's body in St. Afra's. I expected to find nothing 
but a skeleton, or a waxen figure covering the bones. ' But 
what was my surprise to see the original features preserved 



^ ''Within this tomb Angela lies truly buried : why not ? 

Earth here covers what of her was earthly ; her soul dwells in Heaven." 

Or : Believe this tomb doth Angela contain ; 

For here dust covers dust ; her soul with Christ doth reign. 
2 L'Abbe Richaudeau. 



AND THE URSULINES. 258 

entire during three hundred and twenty-seven years ! It is 
of course very much shrivelled ; but putrefaction has not 
touched it. The skin is entire ; the chin, the lower lip, the 
forehead, have scarcely lost anything of their first form. The 
cheeks are flattened, but not very much so. The upper-lip 
has shrunk and exposes the teeth, of vrhich not one is miss- 
ing. The eyes are sunken from the evaporation of the liquid 
parts of the sockets ; but these are not empty. The eye- 
lids are closed and joined. The nose has suffered most ; 
it is very flat. The general color of the face is very pale, 
approaching a yellowish rather than a leaden color. The 
whole figure has none of the repulsive features of a corpse ; 
quite otherwise — my companion and myself thought its ap- 
pearance pleasing, apart from the flattened shape of the 
nose. 

" On our return to the monastery (Ursuline), the Lady 
Superior showed us a plaster cast of St. Angela's features, 
made soon after her death, as well as an engraving which 
showed how she looked in life. The resemblance 'is so strik- 
ing, that any one who had seen St. Angela living could not 
fail to recognize her features as they appear at this day in 
her shrine. The right hand has been taken away ; the left, 
placed on her pilgrim's staff, shows five fingers extremely 
emaciated, the skin barely covering the bones. 

'' In what state is the rest of the body, covered with the 
brown habit and bound at the waist with the white cord of 
St. Francis ? Doneda, who wrote at the beginning of the 
present century, says that the precious remains were dis- 
jointed by the frequent shocks it received while being taken 
out from the wall in its casket to be exposed to the veneration 
of the faithful. He adds that the body is now but a skele- 
ton. He is certainly mistaken, so far as this assertion re- 
gards the face and the left hand, as well as the left foot 



254 ST, ANGELA MERICL 

which is in the possession of the Ursulines of Brescia, and 
which is still surrounded by the dried flesh. . . . 

" I afterward visited the chamber in which Angela lived 
and died. It has been preserved in the state in which she 
left it, without one additional ornament, save a few engrav- 
ings that recall the principal incidents of her life. The walls 
are just in the state in which she beheld them. At the end 
of the room is an alcove or recess where her bed was. Xow 
it contains an altar, within which is her first coffin. On the 
wall, opposite to the window, is an inscription in gilt letters, 
setting forth that — 

''In this poor chamler the most eminent theologians and en- 
lightened churchmen were wont to consult St, Angela, and 
went away astonished at the knowledge communicated iyher.^^ 



CHAPTEK XVIL 

VEKERATIOi^ PAID TO ANGELA MERICI — MIRACULOUS FAYORS 
IK AK"SWER TO THE POPULAR TRUST IK HER IXTERCES- 
SIOK — WHY HER SOLEMK BEATIEICATIOK AKD CAKOKIZA- 
TIOK WERE SO LOKG DELAYED. 

We have seen how spontaneous and universal was the im- 
pulse which moved the popular heart in Brescia and its ter- 
ritory to show the dead Maid of Desenzano the veneration 
due only to such as live and die in " the odor of sanctity/^ 
This last expression is too familiar to Catholic readers to need 
any explanation here. The life of every one of us diffuses 
within our homes and the social sphere in which we move the 
good or ill odor of our virtues or our vices. Elias and Eli- 
saeus, living among the mountain solitudes of Carmel, in the 
evil days of Jezabel's ascendancy in Israel, and of the gen- 
eral apostasy of God's people, had sent their fame far and 
wide through the northern tribes — like the fragrance of Car- 
mel itself when the spring-tide breezes from the Mediterra- 
nean waft the united perfumes of all its flowers inward all 
over the land. And just as in mountainous or Alpine regions 
the lowland cattle, after their long winter, become wild with 
impatience to be led into their familiar upland pastures as 
soon as the winds bring them down the scent of fresh grass 
and spring flowers,^ even so, and more particularly after 



1 It is customary in Switzerland, as it is in Tyrol, to lead the herds and flocks to the 

255 



256 ST, ANGELA MERICl 

long seasons of religious aridity and disturbance, are the 
souls of all who believe in the true God drawn irresistibly to 
those men and women whose virtues and supernatural lives 
convince all who approach them that the Spirit of God is in 
them, and works through them. It needed no stupendous 
miracle performed by any one of these devoted servants of 
the Most High to make all who closely observed their lives to 
exclaim, " Now, by this I know that thou art a man of 
God V (3 Kings 17 : 24.) Even before Elisseus'had obtained 
by his prayers that his kind but childless hosts at Sunam 
should be gladdened by the presence of a son, they had dis- 
covered the holiness of the man. The " Great Lady^^ who 
was to have such signal proof of the prophet's power might 
well say to her husband : ^^ I perceive that this is a holy man 
of God, who often passeth by us'^ (4 King s4 : 9). Was it 
the sole wisdom of Debbora that made " the children of Is- 
rael go up to her for all judgment, ^^ as '' she sat under a 
palm-tree ... in Mount Ephraim'^ ? Was not Debbora's 
wisdom only one effect of her sanctity — a supernatural gift 
of the Holy Ghost, like the extraordinary learning of Angela 
Merici, which made her poor chamber of St. Afra's the oracle 
of priests and laymen alike, of the most learned and the most 



uplands — high up near the glaciers and everlasting snows— as soon as these Alpine 
pastures are covered with the first verdure of spring. There, as is well known, the 
flocks and their guardians remain till the end of summer. It is a most curious spectacle 
to watch the motions of the cattle as the day approaches when they are to be led to their 
grassy paradise among the hills. They refuse to eat, and manifest their impatience to 
set out by their frequent lowing, their restlessness, and by turning toward the familiar 
upland road. When, at length, they are allowed to set out, nothing can exceed the 
joyous alacrity with which they hasten toward their goal. They are drawn to the green 
and iiowery slopes of their favorite " Alps" just as the bee is infallibly directed to the 
far-off garden or meadow where it can load itself with sweels and then return to the 
hive. The spiritual and the physical order, the soul-world unseen, and this beautiful 
earth we live on, are full of the most marvelous and striking analogies — of lessons of 
living light to eyes that can Si'e— because they are the work of the one Almighty hand, 
planned by the same all-wise Mind. 



AND THE VESULINES, 257 

exalted? Wisdom alone, the mere gift of extraordinary sci- 
ence in man or woman, apart from the merited fame of true 
sanctity, may attract the curious or the ambitious learner. 
But who will think of opening his conscience, of laying bare 
the deep sores of his heart, or of begging spiritual guidance 
for future needs from the worldly savant or scientist ? It is 
to Samuel, the man of prayer from his infancy, the ]N'azarite 
from his birth, not to Saul, taller by head and shoulders than 
the multitude of his brethren and superior in wisdom as he 
was in stature, that the people of Israel say in their sore dis- 
tress : '' Cease not to cry to the Lord our God for us, that He 
may save us out of the hand of the Philistines ^' (1 Kings 
7:8). 

Yes ; a holy man or woman, no matter how poor and mean 
their exterior, no matter how carefully they conceal them- 
selves and the place of their abode from the public gaze, is 
like a vessel filled with a most exquisite and penetrating per- 
fume. You may hide it away in the remotest and darkest 
recess of your house ; but its fragrance will spread around in 
spite of your pains to conceal it. The Spirit of God in man 
and woman will betray His presence and His gifts, despite 
every precaution which humility may take to hide them. 
" The sweet odor of Christ '^ will go abroad, and will spread 
far and near. For a true saint of God is God's master- work 
here below ; and the priceless and incomparable gifts with 
which He endows an Angela Merici in Brescia, a Teresa in 
Avila, or a Francis Xavier among the heathens of India and 
Japan, are only the " sweet odor" of a goodness all divine, 
which draws the souls of men heavenward. 

And just as high and low were thus drawn to the poor and 
narrow room of Angela beneath the shadow of St. Afra's and 
Avhile Angela was still among the living, even so when Angela 
was laid to her rest in the crypt of St. Afra's, among the 



258 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

tombs of kindred saints, the Christian people could no more 
be restrained from flocking to her grave, and bestowing on 
the sweet recumbent figure of the holy pilgrim their heartfelt 
testimonies of yeneration, of love, of gratitude, than the 
swollen waters of the neighboring Adige could be made to 
flow back to their source in the Tyrolean mountains. 

The people — and when we say the people, we mean all 
classes of the population, and churchmen as well as laymen 
— began at once, ere Angela had been laid in 'her tomb, to 
bestow on her the appellation of '' Saint." A. quarter of a 
century after her death, a great Italian saint and bishop, St. 
Charles Borromeo, declared openly his conviction that she 
was worthy of the honors of canonization. He only gave 
utterance to the universal sentiment throughout Upper Italy 
— the sentiment of the clergy, of the higher and. most en- 
lightened portion of the community, as well as the feeling, 
deep and heartfelt, of the masses. 

It was to be expected that Desenzano, the native town of 
Angela Merici, where her angelic life and heroic virtues, in 
childhood, girlhood, and womanhood, had ever been house- 
hold topics of edification, would not be backward in paying 
homage to the memory of one so inexpressibly dear to the 
inhabitants. The municipality w^as not slow, very soon after 
the death of Angela, in choosing their saintly townswoman 
as their special patron and protectress in Heaven. In 1587 
her picture was placed in the principal church among those 
of the saints.^ And in 1608, as the miraculous favors ob- 



1 To restrain within dne limits the popular feeling toward persons dead " in order of 
sanctity," wise regulations forbidding certain acts of public veneration were enacted 
by Popes Clement VIII. (1592-1605) and Paul V. (1G05-1G21) ; and these, again, were 
rendered still more stringent by Urban ^^II., who in lG2o decreed that no such honor as 
those mentioned above in the case of Desenzano, should be paid to any person what- 
ever, who had not been solemnly beatified or canonized. The Church in her wisdom 
forbids that the titles of " saint" or " blessed" or " venerable" be applied to any per- 
son till the Apostolic See has first bestowed it officially, and after due examination. 



AND THE URSULINES. 259 

tained by her intercession increased the devotion felt toward 
her by the citizens, a chapel was set apart in the same church 
and called after her name, to which were attached a special 
chaplain and a guardian salaried by the grateful inhabitants 
of " Desenzano-on-the-Lake." Remembering, moreover, the 
two miraculous visions sent to ^Hhe Holy Maid/' as they 
loved to call her, near the town, they built on the farm owned 
by the Merici family, and on the spot pointed out by tradition 
as the scene of one of those apparitions, a little oratory, Avhich 
became forthwith a favorite resort of pilgrims, and w^here 
pious priests loved to come and offer up the Adorable Sacrifice. 
" With the spread of the Ursuline Order to the cities of 
Lombardy and Venetia, the veneration for their foundress 
was also extended in proportion. The virtues and services of 
the daughters could not fail to conciliate reverence and affec- 
tion for their saintly Mother ; and so, throughout the rest of 
Italy, through every country of Continental Europe, through 
Canada, where the venerable Mary of the Incarnation and her 
Sisters were the first apostles of female education, and through 
more than one country of Spanish and Portuguese America, 
the name of Angela Merici was always mentioned with that 
mingled love and respect with which the faithful regard the 
saints. Pictures, statues, medallions, and engravings of the 
Holy Maid of Desenzano became common, expressing every- 
where the sentiments with which she was regarded. Gregory 
XV., in a bull issued on the 9th of February, 1621, in favor 
of the Ursulines of Tulle, in France, mentions, without 
censuring it, the custom followed in their monastery of 
'^honoring by a special devotion St. Augustine, St. Ursula, 
and their own blessed Angela. '^ Archbishops and bishops in 
their respective dioceses authorized or approved the custom 
of celebrating her feast with a public office — in some instances 
with a whole octave — enjoining a strict fast on the vigil of 



260 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

the feast, and marking the solemnities of the latter by a public 
procession, in which Angela's picture was borne along. 
These were honors reserved to canonized saints; and in 
tolerating or sanctioning them the bishops themselves were 
carried away by the current of an enlightened public opinion 
anticipating the solemn judgment of the Holy See. 

Indeed, this instinct of popular piety, which is so sure in 
discerning true holiness of life from its hollow semblance, 
had been, from the very beginning of Christianity, one of the 
chief grounds on which the Church based her judgment about 
the sanctity of the illustrious dead. During the ages of per- 
secution, the people as well as the clergy watched carefully 
the remains of the martyrs, preserved a record of their acts, 
and honored and perpetuated their memory by erecting over 
their burial-place churches or chapels, called, most appro- 
priately, " Memories'' of the martyrs. This was the testimony 
of the Christian people to the heroic souls who had so 
gloriously " witnessed," by shedding their blood to the divin- 
ity of Christ Himself and of His religion. When persecution 
ceased, the heroic sanctity of such men as St. Basil and St. 
Chrysostom, St. Augustine and St. Martin, was as well proven 
to those whom they evangelized and edified, whom they fed 
by the bread of their lofty teachings and induced to practise 
what they taught by the eloquent persuasion of their own 
saintly examples — was as easy, as familiar, and general a 
theme of j)opular opinion, as the martyrdom of St. Cyprian 
or St. Irengeus or St. Polycarp. And, when these great 
fatherly souls and lights of God's people had gone to their 
reward, their tombs were visited and their memory cherished 
with a veneration as great and a gratitude as undying as 
those shown to the martyred dead. 

Still, while allowing all due weight to popular sentiment 
on facts which were open to the judgment of all, the Church 



AND THE URSULINES. 261 

never ceased to exercise the wisest discernment in the suj^reme 
sanction she gave — as was her exclusive right — to all de- 
votional practices in honor of persons of reputed sanctity. 

This prudent discernment was not only practised in Rome, 
where a body of ^^ notaries," or official recorders, collected 
and arrayed in the most authentic form all that pertained to 
the life and death of the holy martyrs and confessors, but in 
every episcopal centre throughout the entire Church. We 
have one remarkable instance of it in the precautions taken 
and the instructions issued by St. Cyprian — destined himself 
to bear a glorious witness to Christ. He commanded, as may 
be seen in his 37th and 79th epistles, that correct lists should 
be kept of all those who had suffered for the faith, and that 
these, together with the most precise information relating to 
their trial and execution, should be sent to himself. 

These precautions, instead of diminishing, increased with 
every succeeding age and with the growth of the Church, the 
central authority in Eome gradually reserving to its own 
tribunals the task of examining and sifting the testimony sent 
to it concerning all persons to whom attached the fame of 
sanctity. Pope Urban VIII. (1623-44) gave to the pontifical 
legislation on this weighty matter its present complete and 
permanent forms ; and the entire proceedings used in the 
long and patient investigation of all claims to the supreme 
degrees of heroic virtue presupposed by true sanctity were 
most admirably explained by a Pope of the last century, 
Benedict XIV. (1740-58). 

During the half-century succeeding the death of St. 
Angela, however, the bishops of Italy and other Catholic 
countries followed the custom hitherto prevailing in their 
respective dioceses, and sanctioned or permitted the demon- 
strations of private and public devotion toward the Foundress 
of the Ursulines — all which, of course, was done without 



262 8T. ANGELA MERIGI 

prejudice to the rights of the Holy See, which is alone the 
seat of infallibility. In some houses of the Company, as in 
that of Treyiso, for instance, the name of Angela was in- 
troduced into the prayer Confiteor (^' I confess to Almighty 
God, etc.") after the names of Saints Peter and Paul. This 
was authorized by custom in Upper Italy, and was a usual 
mode of honoring the patron-saints of parishes, religious 
communities, dioceses, and guilds. Not only were wax-tapers 
lighted in honor of the '^Blessed" Angela, 'as she was 
generally called, but lamps were kept perpetually burning in 
her honor. In France, where, during the first half of the 
seventeenth century, the Ursuline communities spread with a 
marvelous rapidity, a complete '' office,'' with appropriate 
hymns, lessons, and anthems, was composed and recited in 
the Ursuline monasteries. ^ They went further, and drew 
up forms of prayer for every day in the week, with special 
litanies reciting the virtues and glorious actions of the 
saint. 

Nay, in Eome itself the Ursuline monastery, in 1718, 
celebrated an eight-day festival in honor of Angela, whose 
panegyric was daily pronounced from the pulpit to a crowded 
church, and the church itself hung with paintings from the 
hand of the best artists, representing the saint and the 
principal incidents of her life and death. What is most to 
the point is the fact that the reigning Pope, Clement XI., 
honored these solemnities with his presence, thereby indirectly 
sanctioning the public veneration thus paid to the Holy Maid 
of Desenzano. 

This ciiltus (worshipful veneration) paid to St. Angela in 
advance of the sovereign judgment of the Vicar of Christ 
received an uninterrupted, though indirect, sanction from the 
Holy See up to the beginning of the judicial process instituted 
at Rome for her solemn beatification, in 1763, It will be 



AND THE UE8ULINES. 283 

well worth the reader's while to glance at the main facts on 
which this long sanction is founded. 

In the year 1G17 Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of 
Bordeaux, induced the colony of Ursulines which he had 
introduced from Italy to adopt the rules of cloistered nuns. 
This change inyolyed some serious modifications in the Kule 
established by St. Angela, as well as additional obseryances, 
among which was the keeping of a strict fast on the yigil of 
Angela's feast (27th January), and the receiying of Holy 
Communion on the feast itself. Eyery one of these pre- 
scriptions, as well as the Ursuline Rule thus modified, was 
approyed. and rendered obligatory on the Congregation of 
Bordeaux by a decree of Paul V., dated February 3d, 1618 ; 
they were further confirmed by Clement IX., on October 
12fch, 1667, who extended the Rule thus sanctioned, with the 
deyotional practices in honor of the foundress, to all the 
Ursuline monasteries of Germany. All this was made 
obligatory on the monastery jast founded in Rome by Innocent 
XI., in 1688. Last, but not least, the great canonist and 
theologian, Benedict XIV. himself, on May 22d, 1753, con- 
firmed this same Rule with its obseryances, after a most 
careful reyision, and made them obligatory on all monasteries 
of the Ursuline Order for all time.^ 

The decrees of Pope Urban VIII., howeyer, enact that no 
judicial proceedings shall be instituted by the Roman tribunals 
for the beatification of any person till the fiftieth year after 
the death of such person. This, we know, was deyiated 
from in the case of St. Alphonsus Liguori ; and, again, quite 
recently in the case of Pope Pius IX., a deyiation was asked 
for and refused. 

Now, with respect to St. Angela, the first judicial steps 



1 Father Salvatori, pp. 134, 135. 



264 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

were taken by the municipality of Brescia m 1560, and a 
commission was appointed to make inquiries and collect 
documentary evidence. In 1568 the Bishop (Bollano) of 
Brescia commissioned John Baptist Nazari, a notary-public 
and resident of the city, to obtain the sworn testimony of the 
persons who had intimately known Angela Merici. Among 
these were Antonio dei Eomani, Augustine Gallo, Bertolino 
Boscolo, and James Chizzola — our old acquaintances, nearly 
all of them. From the evidence thus collected 'Xazari drew 
the materials of his Life of Angela Merici — the first 
published biography of the saint. In 1572 the town-council 
of Brescia besought St. Charles Borromeo to use his influence 
with the Eoman authorities for " the introduction of Angela's 
cause ;'' but as he did or could do nothing, they again 
renewed their instances in 1581, Avhen the holy archbishop 
was in Brescia, as Visitor Apostolic. Eome was in no hurry 
then as now ; and a century nearly elapsed before anything 
could be done. In 1674 the French TJrsulines began to move 
in the matter, the monastery of Dijon taking the lead and 
sending to Eome a commissioner with the funds necessary to 
pay all the costs of the proceedings. He tried in vain, how- 
ever, if he tried at all ; and, although the good nuns made 
persistent attempts to have the cause opened in 1674, 1682, 
and iu 1692, their perseverance proved unavailing.^ 

The time chosen by the French TJrsulines to urge these 
proceedings on the Eoman tribunals was most unfortunate. 
To be sure, the daughters of Angela Merici and the promoters, 
under them, of the beatification of their parent, must have 
been roused to renewed zeal by the canonization, on April 
12th, 1671, among others, of St. Gaetan de Tiene, St. Francis 
Borgia, and St. Eose of Lima (born 1586 ; died 1617). But 



1 Salvatori, pp. 138, 139. 



AND THE URSULINES. 265 

the question of the regalia, or royal rights over the revenues 
of beneJSices, had already been raised by the French Parlia- 
ment in 1668, and assumed such a formidable aspect all 
through the succeeding years, that God's providence alone 
saved the Church of France from being hurried into both 
schism and heresy, as the Church of England was by Henry 
VIII. Pope Innocent XI., who ascended the pontifical 
throne in August, 1676, was one of the purest, the most 
learned, and the most fearless rulers ever given to Christ's 
flock. He did not create the terrible storm which assailed 
the Church and lasted all through his pontificate. It was 
the work of the French king's intolerable arrogance, abetted 
as he was by his Jansenistic lawyers and parliament, and 
but very mildly contradicted by the majority of his bishops. 
In 1682 was issued that famous and fatal " Declaration of the 
Galilean Church" which a royal decree made obligatory on 
all teaching bodies, and which became thenceforward a kind 
of national creed, till monarchy, creed, parliament, and 
hierarchy went down, ingulfed in the tidal wave of the 
French Eevolution. There is no need, therefore, of suppos- 
ing for a moment that the Eoman tribunals were guilty of 
unaccountable supineness during these calamitous years 
(1676-89) when the French ambassador at the head of an 
armed force braved and insulted the Pope in his own capital, 
and all the energy and patience of Eoman statesmen, jurists, 
and theologians were taxed to the utmost to solve the mighty 
and perplexed questions pressed on their attention by the 
king, the bishops, and the parliaments of France.^ 

The favorable opinion entertained of the Ursulines and 
their foundress by Benedict XIV., as we have seen above, 



1 See the biographies of Innocent XI. , and of his immediate predecessors and succes- 
sors, in Artaud'B "Lives of the Popes,'' vol. ii. 



266 ST, ANGELA MERICl 

and the tacit approbation given by him to the ciiUus of the 
latter, encouraged the Order to prosecute her cause more 
zealously than ever under that pontifiE's successor, Clement 
XIII. (1758-69). The cause, thanks to the energy of the 
then superior of the Ursuline Monastery in Eome, was 
formally opened in 1763. All the evidence pertaining to 
Angela Merici's life and death, to the honors paid her by the 
faithful, to the heroic virtues practised by her, and the 
miracles performed through her intercession, was scrupulously 
and unceasingly sifted year after year till April 30th, 1768, 
when Clement XIII., by a solemn judgment, sanctioned the 
cultiis paid to the Holy Maid of Desenzano, and confirmed as 
rightful the appellation of " Blessed'' bestowed on her from 
the hour of her death by the public voice. 

The " beatification" of a holy personage, however, only per- 
mits the breviary office and the mass appointed by the con- 
gregation of Eites to be recited within a religious order, or 
within the limits of a diocese, etc. ; whereas,^ in the solemn 
ceremony of canonization, the Vicar of Christ pronounces his 
judgment ex-cathedra, addresses his sentence to the entire 
church, and extends to the whole flock of Christ the cultus 
hitherto paid in a private or limited manner to the saint. 

When the certainty of the approaching beatification be- 
came known in Brescia, it caused a deep joy among the now 
numerous but still fervent company who claimed her as parent, 
and clung with undying devotion to the place of their birth 
and the shrine which contained her remains. 

One may not unreasonably regret that they were moved 
by their piety to give her a more splendid tomb, and to dis- 
turb the virginal body from its repose, especially as it had 
already been disturbed during the reparations of 1580. The 
appearance of the remains, preserved as they had been till 
then from the corruption of the grave, could not fail of being 



/ 



AND THE URSULINES. 267 

injured by this second remoyal. The miraculous preservation 
of the body and the sweet fragrance which continued to cling 
to it were enough of themselves to make the lowliest of sepul- 
chres venerable and lovely to the Christian heart. All these 
removals — made without due care, perhaps — shook and dis- 
located the frail texture of the dried flesh ; and there ensued 
deterioration and disfigurement. 

" In 1774/' says Father Salvatori, ^^ a casket of more beau- 
tiful shape and material was made, adorned with carving and 
gold, and in this, reposing on cloth of the most precious 
texture, was placed the body of the saint, protected further 
by plates of crystal. Now, while taking it out of the old 
casket and replacing with a new the old Franciscan habit, 
they found it still incorrupt in several parts. The head was 
still covered with the skin, as in life ; the hair was entire ; and 
in the right socket the eyeball was full, showing the pupil with 
its natural black color, and the eyelids open, but slightly 
shrunken. The left leg, in its full length, was covered with 
the skin, as well as the chest, the parts about the heart being 
perfectly preserved, and not at all displaced. The rest of 
the body was but a skeleton ; and on one finger was a ring of 
lead, on which were engraved the words Jesus Ohristus. 
After expelling from these sacred remains the humidity 
which clung to them, and replacing the old Franciscan habit 
with a new one of silk of the same shape and color, the Ursu- 
lines laid them reverently in the new casket and restored this 
to its proper position in the old tomb. 

'' Two years later, however, it was resolved to transfer the 
remains to the drier atmosphere of the upper church. So, 
the Pontifical rescript (July 1st, 1776) authorizing this 
change having been obtained, they set about preparing a 
beautiful tomb of white marble adorned with gilt bronze, 
situated above the altar of St. Latinus, and immediately 



268 ST, ANGELA MEBICI, 

beneatli the picture of that saint. They also constructed 
another shrine, of the exact size of the old one, and richly 
decorated. Eyerything being ready, on the 4th of April, 
1777, the Bishop of Brescia, John Nani, accompanied by a 
select number of ecclesiastics, noblemen, and Ursulines, 
went to the lower church and took out the casket, which was 
then carried in solemn procession by priests to the upper 
church, and placed on a table richly draped. A delay of a 
few days was granted to the Ursulines, from among whom the 
bishop chose a few to cleanse the sacred body and to reclothe 
it with the former habit. A distinguished professor of anat- 
omy, with trusty witnesses, was present the while, the pro- 
fessor seeing to it that each bone was replaced in its proper 
position, and all the proceedings being carefully attested. 

" When the TJrsulines had thus satisfied their filial piety, 
the church was magnificently draped, and on April 12th 
the bishop headed a solemn procession, and the new casket, 
borne on the shoulders of priests, was deposited in the new 
shrine, where it is at present venerated. Then clergy and 
people united in the celebration of a most joyous festival. ^'^ 

One can scarcely recall these dates, and the triumphant 
festivities of the Ursulines throughout the world, in France 
and Eome particularly, without remembering at the same 
time the calamities under which the Society of Jesus lay 
crushed, and to all appearance annihilated forever. During the 
month of November, 1775, while the Eoman Ursulines were 
laboring to obtain the necessary authorization for the solemn 
translation of the remains of their foundress to a more splen- 
did monument in the upper church of St. Afra, Lawrence 
Eicci, the Superior- General of the suppressed Company of 
Jesus, was dying, a prisoner and heart-broken, within the 



1 Salvatori, pp. 139, 140. 



AND THE URSULINES. 269 

Oastle of St. Angelo^ in Kome. With his dying breath, in 
presence of his Judge, yeiled in the Holy Viaticum, and in 
the hearing of more than one exalted personage, the dying 
man — as pure-minded, great-souled, and devoted a priest as 
had ever sat in the place af St. Ignatius Loyola — protested 
that the Society goyerued by him, and suppressed amid cir- 
cumstances of such odious barbarity and barefaced injustice, 
was guiltless of the crimes charged against it by the royal 
conspirators of the Houses of Bourbon and Braganza, and by 
their Jansenistic and anti-Catholic abettors and agents. 

It was a strange contrast — that of the two great teaching 
orders, founded almost the same year, by saintly personages 
so much alike in wisdom unacquired in the schools, in au- 
sterity of life, loftiness of purpose, and deep appreciation 
of the needs of their country and age : the one providentially 
exalted, praised, fostered, and flourishing more and more 
daily ; while the other, which on one day counted an army 
of 30,000 apostles of the heathen and preceptors of youth, 
was on the next utterly swept from the face of both hemi- 
spheres ; the one celebrating the beatification of its glorious 
parent amid the transports of the millions who looked up to 
her daughters with such deep gratitude and trustfulness, 
while the head of the other was dying, imprisoned like the 
worst of convicted criminals, and those who still loved to call 
him " Father^' pining, themselves, amid the dungeons of 
Portugal and Spain, or condemned to hold down their heads 
beneath the intolerable load of calumny all-powerful iniquity 
compelled them to bear. Not forever were they to bear or 
forbear. The sacrifice which combined kings and conspiring 
statesmen wrung from the helplessness of one Pontiif was to 
be compensated by the fearless maguanimity of another, who 
had also drunk deep of the cup of persecution held to his lips 
by despotic hands. 



270 ST, ANGELA MERld 

But from November, 1775, to August 7th, 1814, how assid- 
nously were both tlrsulines and dispersed Jesuits to labor for 
the one great cause so unspeakably dear to the heart of the 
Church — the cause of female education ! The sons of St. 
Ignatius, in their accepted exile and obscurity, and while cher- 
ishing the fond hope that the resurrection-dawn would soon 
come again for their suppressed Company, worked untiringly 
to provide educators for the young generation of the nine- 
teenth century ; they gave, as Sisters and auxiliaries to the 
tJrsulines, the daughters of Sophie Madeleine Barat and 
/ulie Billiart, without mentioning others ! 

And so the two immediate successors of the sorely-tried 
Clement XIV., Pius YI. and Pius VII., might well make it 
a labor of love, in the midst of the unceasing persecutions 
which assailed them, in their turn, to encourage the Roman 
tribunals in forwarding the canonization of the Blessed An- 
gela Merici. 

A decree of Pius VI., dated July 16th, 1777, declared that 
the virtues practised by the Maid of Desenzano were heroic, 
each in its kind. Meanwhile, the Congregation of Rites was 
diligently inquiring into the authenticity and nature of the 
miracles attributed to her ; for, in this matter of miracles, 
the Holy See demands the most absolute and overwhelming 
certainty, as a condition toward canonization. As we shall 
see in the next chapter, God was pleased at this very juncture 
to glorify His lowly handmaiden before men, and in a most 
troublous age, by working at her intercession miracles most 
solemnly attested. 

At length, on the 27th January, 1790, Angela's two- 
hundred-and-sixteenth birthday, Pius VI., after offering up 
the Holy Sacrifice in the chapel of the Ursuline Monastery in 
Rome, promulgated the decree which declared the miracles 
authentic, and authorized the final proceedings toward canon- 



AND THE URSULINES. 271 

ization. Two months later, on the 29th of March, he ad- 
dressed to the assembled cardinals the memorable allocution 
in which he deplores the an ti- Christian revelation taking 
place in France. A few years afterward Pius himself was to 
be carried away by force from Kome and Italy, to die in a 
French prison at Valence ; while during the intervening 
years the Ursulines of France were to be driven from their 
monasteries by the revolutionary storm, and more than one 
of them was to glorify her Mother Angela and the faith of 
her fathers by laying down her head on the scaffold or perish- 
ing amid the horrors of the Terrorist prisons. 

And thus was the Company of St. Ursula tried by blood 
and fire, and prepared for the memorable 24th of May, 1807, 
when the voice of the lamb-like but heroic Pius VII. pro- 
claimed her sanctity in St. Peter's, uniting with her in these 
supreme honors of canonization the French peasant-girl St, 
Coletta or Nicoletta Boillet (1380-1447), who reformed the 
Poor Clares of France ; the noble Hyacintha Mariscotti 
(1588-1643), of Viterbo ; St. Francis Caracciolo (1563-1603), 
a native of the Abruzzi, and the founder of the Minor Clerks 
Eegular ; and St. Benedict Filadelf, a man of negro parent- 
age (1526-1589), and the light of Messina, his native city, 
and of all Sicily in his day. How like to each other were the 
three saintly women thus united in the veneration of the 
Church, one may know who reads their most edifying lives. 

Six years afterward, Pius VII. himself was dragged from 
Eome by the soldiers of the French Emperor, and subjected 
to the long trials of which the world has heard the details 
with equal pity and indignation. 

Thus the Ursuline communities, amid their mingled joys 
and sorrows, hopes and fears, could exult in the honor be- 
stowed on the name of Angela Merici, and invoke her name 
with increased fervor and confidence, while addressing them- 



272 ' ST. ANGELA MEBIOL 

selves to the arduous labors of a new era and looking forward 
anxiously to the pregnant and threatening future. They, 
like their sisters in Valenciennes/ might lose even their 
lives for the faith ; but they now could believe with un- 
bounded trustfulness the divine promise that they were 
not' to perish, while such pure and generous blood as theirs 
could only impart to the wide-branching Ursuline tree a new 
vitality and fruitf ulness. 



1 "On the 17th and 23d October, 1794, eleven Ursnlines belonging to the Monastery 
of Valenciennes sealed their apostleship of teaching by martyrdom. On the eve of their 
execution they were so happy as to receive Holy Communion from a priest, who was 
their fellow-prisoner and soon became their fellow-martyr. They were allowed to cele- 
brate their Last Supper together, saying to each other that on the morrow they would 
celebrate it in Paradise. All who beheld them thus shed tears of admiration. . . . 
They cut each other's hair (to be ready for the guillotine), issued from prison with their 
hands bound behind their backs, . . . and went to the scaffold chanting the Te 
Deum. . . ,''''— Bohrbacher^ '' Hist, of the Churchy 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

MIRACLES, AND YIRTUES AS MARVELOUS AS MIRACLES. 

Whe:!!^ the Son of God had come down to teach and to save 
the world. He, concealed as His infinite majesty was beneath 
the lowliness of our human nature, did not ask of His coun- 
trymen to believe in Himself and His mission on the simple 
ground that He asserted Himself to be the long-expected Ee- 
deemer. His first disciples ; after the miracle of Cana in Gali- 
lee, " believed in Him,'' because by changing the water into 
wine He '^manifested His glory'' — that is, displayed His 
power as God and Author of nature. When John the Baptist, 
aftertheresurrectionof the widow's son at Na'im (St. Luke 7), 
sends two of his own disciples to ask of the Master, ''Art 
thou He that art to come ? or look we for another ?" He, an- 
swering, . . . said to them :" Go and relate to John what you 
have heard and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the 
lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, to 
the poor the Gospel is preached." To the Jews who per- 
sisted in closing their ears to the divinity of His teaching. He 
solemnly said : " I speak to you, and you believe not ; the 
works that I do in the name of My Father, they give testi- 
mony of Me. ... If I do not the works of My Father, believe 
Me not. But if I do, though you will not believe Me, be- 



i St. John 10 : 25, 37, 38. 

273 



2Y4 ST. ANGELA MERICT, 

Nor was this divine miracle-working power to cease with 
Him : it was to remain throughout all future time, with His 
apostles and their successors in the Church, as the seal of 
their mission and the conyincing proof of that Church's sanc- 
tity. He said, in His yery last discourse to them before His 
ascension : " These signs shall follow them that belieye : in 
My name they shall cast out devils ; they shall speak with 
new tongues ; they shall take up serpents, and if they shall 
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall 
lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover/' ^ 

"When, therefore, St. Peter, in fulfillment of the Master's 
promise, had performed in the most conspicuous and fre- 
quented entrance to the Temple a stupendous miracle, he 
said to the astonished crowd of Jews : '^ Ye men of Israel, 
why wonder you at this ? or why look you upon us, as 
if by our strength or power we had made this man to 
walk?"^ 

It is impossible to resist the evidence of our senses when 
we see a man at one moment a helpless cripple who has never 
walked in his life, and behold him the next moment stand- 
ing upright before our eyes, walking, sound in every limb, 
and praising God for the sudden change. There is another 
sense, too, whose evidence goes irresistibly with that of the 
eye — that divine light of reason in the soul which tells us, 
when such a cure has been thus made in the name of God 
or of His Christ, that the calling on that name is a chal- 
lenge to His power and goodness, and that the cure which 
follows is as surely the work of His right hand as was the 
creation of the world in the beginning. Yoar Liberal, 
your atheist, your modern scientist and materialist, could no 
sooner see that cripple suddenly, cured by the invocation of 



1 St. Mark 16 : 17, 18. ^ Acts 3 ; 12. 



AND THE UR8ULINES. 275 

the Holy Name than all the voices of his soul would call on 
him to kneel and worship Jesus as the true living God. 

Priests and children of the Catholic Church and heirs to 
all Christ's promises, we believe in miracles to-day, as did our 
fathers before us since the days of the apostles, since Peter 
and John stood in the Beautiful Gate. Our fathers have seen 
miracles age after age, and year after year ; and they have 
borne their witness to the fact that God in their midst still 
continued to be glorified in His saints, and to glorify them by 
using them as the instruments of His power and fatherly 
mercy. Nor can we Christians of the nineteenth century 
believe that the hand of God is shortened ; for He multiplies 
on every side the prodigies of His power to convince an un- 
believing and devil-ridden generation that there is still a God 
who is the Judge of the whole earth. 

We give the following miracles in the order in which they 
are given by Father Salvatori, who followed himself the acts 
of canonization, and the order followed by the Sacred Con- 
gregation of Eites : 

1. Angela Filippini iii 1777. This lady was the wife of 
Pietro Kavelli, a notary and well-known citizen of Brescia. 
She was a long and patient sufferer. Her illness began by a 
great sense of lassitude in every member, accompanied with 
acute muscular pain, and soon followed by the appearance of 
livid spots, now in one part of her body and now in another. 
Her teeth grew black, her gums became swollen and emitted 
frequently a fetid and bloody matter, while she experienced 
extreme difiBculty of breathing, great wakefulness, a burning 
fever, and convulsions. All these symptoms became intensi- 
fied when she reached her sixty-seventh year. Besides, her 
arms, chest, and stomach were covered with small tumors, 
which caused excruciating pain. In October, 1776, two 
sores more painful than all the others broke out on her lower 



276 ST, ANGELA MERIGl 

limbs, and these soon became ulcerated. .After some time, 
however, the ulcer on the left leg was closed, but that on the 
right increased in size and malignancy. . . . The issue from 
these sores was of the most offensiye nature ; but a cessation 
of it only threw the poor sufferer into deadly spasms. Under 
these circumstances. Dr. Charles Tebaldi, her physician, and 
a man of great repute, declared that these symptoms were 
those of a yirulent scurvy which had poisoned the entire sys- 
tem. He advised the lady to have recourse merely to appli- 
cations of soothing vegetable poultices which would keep the 
ulcers open. And in this advice he was sustained by the 
surgeon. During the five months which intervened between 
his advice and the lady's miraculous cure, the ulcers only 
grew more frightful, so that no hope of a change for the bet- 
ter remained. 

Just then the approaching solemnities of the translation of 
the remains of St. Angela gave a great impulse to the popu- 
lar devotion in Brescia. There was to be a Triduum or 
three days' public prayers immediately following the trans- 
lation, and a friend of Madame Eavelli's strongly urged her 
to have recourse to the saint. So, on the 10th of April, 1777, 
the translation occurring on the 12th, the poor sufferer began 
to pray fervently to the Blessed Angela. But her suffering 
only seemed to increase with every prayer she offered up. 
She was not discouraged, nevertheless. Indeed, she seemed 
to have from the first moment a firm confidence that she 
Avould be healed. On the 13th day of April — that is, the first 
day of the solemn Triduum — she had herself taken, in spite 
of her bodily torture, to the neighboring Church of St. Zeno, 
where she made her confession and received Holy Com- 
munion in honor of the saint, thereby hoping to incline the 
latter to favor her suit, and to render herself more worthy of 
the grace she solicited. Her efforts apparently did but aggra- 



AND THE URSULINES. 277 

vate the ulcers and increase in proportion her agony of suf- 
fering. Still, this very increase only inspired the patient 
with a firmer trust in Angela's intercession. The morning 
of the 15th April dawned ; it was the last day of the Tri- 
duum. She asked to be taken to the Church of St. Afra ; 
and no one could find heart to dissuade her from her pur- 
pose. So, leaning on her husband and her maid, she dragged 
herself along with indescribable pain, and stopped not till she 
was before the tomb of the saint. Nothing could prevent 
her from kneeling down to hear the Mass which was begin- 
ning ; and having heard a first without much difficulty, she 
remained kneeling during a second and a third, praying the 
while with extraordinary fervor. The last Mass being over, 
she arose of herself and without either assistance or pain, and, 
feeling no longer the presence of anything like swelling in 
her limbs, she hastened homeward without the slightest as- 
sistance, to see what had become of the ulcer. The poultices 
fell away of themselves, leaving the entire limb perfectly 
sound, no trace remaining of the dreadful ulcer but that the 
lips of the scar which marked, its place were not yet quite 
closed. 

" Thereupon,'' says Salvatori, '^ she applied to the wound 
an image of the saint, beseeching her most earnestly not to 
leave incomplete the merciful work of her perfect cure. Nor 
was the prayer unheard ; for, withdrawing soon afterward 
the image, the cure was seen to be perfect in the fullest sense. 
It were out of place," continues the historian, " to paint the 
astonishment, the joy, the deep devotional feeling, not only 
of the lady herself, but of her household and of the entire 
city. The reader will easily understand them, and allow me 
to pass to the other miracles Avhich I must mention." 

2. The second miracle occurred in the great City Hospital 
of Brescia. The person who was this time the subject of 



278 ST. ANGELA MEEIGl 

God's infinite goodness and the motherly solicitude of Blessed 
Angela, was a girl by name Maria d'Acquafredda, a member 
of a '^ Conservatory" or training-school for nurses attached 
to the hospital. She was in her twenty-seventh year, and in 
a very poor state of health, when, on the 20th of February, 
1779, she was struck with apoplexy. She fell senseless to the 
ground, her right side paralyzed, her teeth so firmly set that 
it was with extreme difficulty a few spoonfuls of liquid were 
introduced. Eight entire days of the most energetic and 
skilful treatment only served to make the patient recover a 
little consciousness, leaving her, however, quite speechless. 
The paralyzed members remained insensible to the action of 
lancet or fire. This state of lethargic prostration lasted 
till the end of May, when the rector of the parish and the 
attendant physicians judged it necessary that the sufferer 
should receive the last sacraments. As the 31st of May was 
the day on which the Blessed Angela's feast was always cele- 
brated in Brescia, the poor, dying girl, collecting all she 
could of her remaining strength and impaired senses, besought 
by signs her attendants to invoke in her favor the interces- 
sion of the saint. This suggestion had first come from one 
of the girl's companions, Maria Faustina, who bent all her 
efforts to excite in her friend the most unlimited confidence 
in the Blessed Angela's prayers. A present of olive-oil was 
therefore sent to St. Afra's to be used in the lamps kept burn- 
ing before the shrine, and from the lamps themselves a little 
oil was taken back to the hospital. While the sufferer was 
exhorted to lift her heart to God and to pray fervently to His 
glorious servant present near Himself in Heaven, the infir- 
marian took a feather, dipped it in the oil, and anointed there- 
with the mouth. At the very first touch of the oil the jaws 
opened freely, and the infirmarian proceeded to touch in like 
manner the teeth and tongue and side. In an instant Maria 



AND THE URSULINES. 279 

d^Acquafredda recovered her speech, and felt that her para- 
lyzed limbs had recovered their sensibility. She rose forth- 
with from her bed, and began to move through the room as 
if in the full possession of health and vigor, exclaiming the 
while, " I am cured ! I am cured V^ Maria Faustina, like 
one beside herself, and scarcely able to believe her own senses, 
ran about the hospital telling everybody of the miracle. 
The Superior and her companions came hurrying in to the 
sick-room to see with their own eyes what had taken place, 
and remained overwhelmed by the sudden and total change. 
In the afternoon the happy girl in whom it had been 
wrought anointed herself once more with the oil, supped 
with the community, and on the next day went about her 
usual occupations as if she had not been ailing for a single 
hour. More than that, not a trace of the chronic affection 
from which she had been suffering before her paralytic 
stroke remained with her recovered health. She felt she 
had a new lease of life, and lost no time in going to the tomb 
of her benefactress, and showing in the most public manner 
her gratitude and veneration. 

3. Following the narrative of Father Salvatori, as well as 
the order in which these miracles were examined and reported 
by the Congregation of Eites, we come to another cure not a 
little like the preceding, which took place in Verona in 1778. 
Maria Angela Comini, a professed nun of the Monastery of 
St. John the Evangelist della Beverara, in Yerona, began, 
when in her twenty-fourth year, to be afflicted with a pain 
in the chest and left side, which prevented her from lying 
down, or from resting on her left side. On the 13th of Oc- 
tober, 1777, she found, on attempting to leave her bed, that 
she had lost the use of her left leg. Then, in spite of the 
medical aid called in, she lost the use of the right arm and 
hand, besides experiencing an intense pain in her head, a 



280 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

partial paralysis of ilie organs of speech^ and extreme diffi- 
culty in breathing. The symptoms went on increasing till 
at length the whole left side was paralyzed and Yoid of all 
sensibility. The first appearance of these paralytic symp- 
toms was accompanied with a violent fever^ which, with 
slight intermissions, lasted nine whole months, and had all the 
symptoms of an acute inflammation. During this long interval 
the patient was bled thirty times, and every other remedy 
tnown to the ripest science of the day was employed in vain. 
She complained of excruciating pain in her chest, which fre- 
quently deprived her of consciousness, and the purulent dis- 
charges noted by the physicians convinced them that there 
was an internal tumor in the chest. For six entire months she 
lived on a little broth — so little, indeed, that it was a mat- 
ter of wonder how she could live at all, with want of nourish- 
ment and her sleepless nights and unceasing agony. '' It was 
not,'' says, in his sworn testimony, the physician in charge, 
'' so much apoplexy that we feared she was coming to ; but 
what caused us most apprehension was the pain in the chest, 
which had brought her to death's-door ; no medicament 
could be introduced by the mouth for forty days before the 
cure, as she had not the power to swallow anything ; nor dur- 
ing tliis interval did her extreme debility allow us to think 
of bloodletting." Indeed, the sufferer had more than once 
received the sacraments of the dying, as her attendants be- 
lieved that her last hour was come. Such was the condition 
of Sister Mary Angela on July 13th, 1778, nine months 
after her first attack of apoplexy. Then it came into the 
mind of Sister Teresa Fortunata Gamba to make the patient 
have recourse to the Blessed Angela. A relic of the saint 
was forthwith placed near her bed on a table between lighted 
tapers, and a novena of prayers was at once begun. From 
that moment a slight improvement was noticeable, and this 



AND THE URSULIFES, 281 

became more so still on the next day, the confidence and 
fervor of the sick nun increasing with this sensible change 
for the better. On the third day, carried away by her fer- 
vent faith in the powerful intercession of Blessed Angela, she 
besought her in the most touching tones to obtain her per- 
fect cure, saying to the saint that a perfect restoration of her 
strength and health within the next twenty-four hours would 
prove to every one that the change was a true miracle, due to 
God, the author of every blessing. This was on the 15th ; 
and on the 16th, in less than twenty-four hours after putting 
up her fervent petition, Sister Mary Angela stood before the 
entire community, completely cured of every ailment ! She 
dressed herself without any assistance, and went to an- 
nounce to one of the Sisterhood what G-od and Blessed An- 
gela had done for her. Not a trace was left of her former 
ills. And her physicians, overcome by the surprise of a 
change so sudden, affirmed that it was a double miracle, and 
testified to this effect in the juridical proceedings instituted 
by the local authorities. 

These are the three miracles examined with such consci- 
entious care by the Roman tribunals ; all the documentary 
evidence relating thereto being of the most authentic kind, 
and a single imperfect link sufficing to cause the judges to 
set aside inexorably proofs which would be accepted as con- 
vincing by any judge or jury among us or outside of Eome. 
As the reader may perceive on perusing carefully the above 
narratives, the miraculous cures were most public, most sud- 
den, and most perfect. The patient in each case was re- 
duced to such extremity, that all human skill was of no 
avail, and the physicians themselves had to confess their 
utter powerlessness to effect a change for the better or to ar- 
rest the fatal course of the disorder. Then came the sudden 
and perfect change, for which no remedy, no agency, other 



282 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

than the almighty power of the Creator, could account. Here 
there is no possibility of delusion or of the intervention of 
any cause, natural or preternatural, save that of the sole Lord 
of life and death, and of the pleading vrith Him in Heaven of 
the great motherly heart which had ever been on earth the 
ready friend of all kind of human suffering. 

Other miracles, through every century which has elapsed 
since the death of the Holy Maid of Desenzano, have attested, 
both in Italy and all over the world, the efficacy of her inter- 
cession. It would be pleasant to present them here for the 
edification of the reader, were it not that our limited space 
warns us to reserve for matters which may not be omitted 
our remaining chapters. 

But as miracles such as these described are the test of real 
personal holiness, and constitute the assurance of a saintly 
personage's power with the all-powerful Creator and all- 
merciful Dispenser of graces, even so are the heroic virtues 
practised by Christian man or woman the very substance 
and soul of that holiness of life of which miracles are the 
seal. . 

Not less carefully, patiently, and thoroughly do the 
tribunals appointed by the Holy See examine into and 
scrutinize every detail of the public and private life of those 
who die in the odor of sanctity, and for whom the honors of 
canonization are claimed. As to the life which we have been 
describing — though our delineations be never so imperfect — 
yet must we have failed to grasp ourselves and to convey to 
our readers the distinctive traits of Angela Merici's heroic 
figure, or she must stand before the mind's eye as different 
in her own beautiful womanly character from other saintly 
women, as John the Baptist was from the prophets and 
saints who preceded him, and as St. John the Evangelist was 
from his fellows in the College of Apostles. But, no matter 



AND THE UBSULIKES, 283 

in what sphere the saints move during their lifetime, and no 
matter what may be their sex, their avocation, or the personal 
gifts and endowments which they may bring with them to 
their calling, the virtues and qualities which go toward 
making up true, perfect, heroic — supernaturally heroic — 
manhood and womanhood, are substantially the same in all. 
'^ Very various are the saints, ^^ says Cardinal Newman;^ 
"their very variety is a token of God's workmanship; but 
however various and whatever was their special line of duty, 
they have been heroes in it : they have attained such noble 
self-command, they have so crucified the flesh, they have so 
renounced the world ; they are so meek, so gentle, so tender- 
hearted, so merciful, so sweet, so cheerful, so full of prayer, 
so diligent, so forgetful of injuries, they have sustained such 
great and continued pains, they have persevered in such 
vast labors, they have made such valiant confessions, they 
have wrought such abundant miracles, they have been blessed 
with such strange successes, that they have set up a standard 
before us of truth, of magnanimity, of holiness, of love. They 
are not always our examples, we are not always bound to fol- 
low them ; not more than we are bound to obey literally some 
of our Lord's precepts, such as turning the cheek, or giving 
away the coat ; not more than we can follow the course of 
the sun, moon, or stars in the heavens ; but though not 
always our examples, they are always our standard of right 
and good ; they are raised up to be monuments and lessons, 
they remind us of God, they introduce us into the unseen 
world, they teach us what Christ loves, they track out for us 
the way which leads heavenward. They are to us who see 
them, what wealth, notoriety, rank, and name are to the mul- 
titude of men who live in darkness — objects of our veneration 
and our homage/' 



1 '* Discourses to Mixed Congregations," p. 94, Eng. ed. 



284 ST. AJVGELA MERICl 

And here it is that the divine truth and beauty of the Cath- 
olic teaching and practice shine forth so transcendently. For 
truth is, to our minds, but the knowledge of beings and their 
relations toward each other : it is like the light, at the close 
of the darkest night, dawning upon earth and sky and mak- 
ing them and all that they contain visible to the eye. And 
beauty is the resplendent creation of truth, just as color is 
the creation of light. Now because the Catholic, doctrine is 
divine it enables the mind of man to take in not only the 
relations which bind nature to its Author, but more especially 
the essential ties which bind the natural man to his Maker, 
the natural virtues which merely as man he has to practise 
in order to fulfill the idea of manhood stamped on the souls 
of the entire race by the hand which made them. And these 
virtues are exalted to a sublime, inconceivable, and divine 
ideal in the Person of our supernatural model, God made 
man for our imitation. 

The perfect Christian man is man with all that is good and 
great in his moral nature exalted to the dignity of adopted 
child of God, and so living in that divine rank as to verify 
the saying of the old Roman pagans about their Christian 
contemporaries : Christiaiius alter Christus, " every Chris- 
tian in another Christ,'^ as if every son born of the blood of 
Calvary reflected in his conduct the divine virtues of Jesus 
Christ. The ordinary good and serious-minded Christian 
man is he who with his whole heart strives to be Christ-like 
in thought, and word, and deed ; the saint is the man or the 
woman who is truly and in a sublime degree Christ-like in 
their interior and their exterior life, in mind and heart and 
conduct. 

As to Angela Merici, we may here quote appositely to our 
purpose the pen-portrait drawn of her by John Baptist 
Nazari, her earliest biographer, and the man to whom was 



AND THE UR8ULINES, 285 

committed to draw up a juiidical and authentic summary of 
her life and virtues, from the sworn testimony of those who 
had known her longest and best in Brescia. " In her/' he 
says, " one could discover no unworthy affection, because she 
was a stranger to ambition, vainglory, and anger. Her sole 
delight was in humility, in the quiet, contemplative life 
fostered by religious rule. In this manner of life, as in the 
pathway marked out by our Lord, she practised fasting, 
long vigils, and prayer, so that, like a true religious, she was 
always firm in her faith, humble in her conversation, modest 
and exemplary in her dress, unwearied in her nightly vigils, 
fervent in all her prayers, most patient in ill- fortune, most 
devout in receiving the sacramants, and ever most ready to 
practise all the good works of a Christian.'^ 

Ther Heroic Manner in luMcTi St, Angela practised all the 
Moral Virtues. 

To begin with those virtues which are enjoined by the law 
of nature written on the hearts of all men, as with what is 
easiest and most accessible to our good-will, let us give a 
glance at the four principal of these — the Cardinal Virtues, 
as they are termed, because they are the very foundation of a 
true moral excellence in every man and woman deserving of 
the name. These are the fundamental virtues on which the 
heathen philosophers of old made all manly goodness and 
greatness to hinge, and on which they made the existence of 
all human society to depend. They are Prudence, Justice, 
Temperance, and Fortitude. 

If prudence, in the sense in which its nature and attributes 
are usually understood by theologians, be considered as the 
habitual disposition toward choosing the highest and holiest 
end, and employing the means best suited to its attainment, 



286 * ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

"we can see that virtue shine forth in Angela's conduct from 
her childhood to her latest day. Under the impulse of the 
Diyine Spirit, when yet in every sense a child, her whole soul 
seemed fixed on striving after the highest good — after that 
supreme holiness of life of which she heard in the Lives of 
the Saints. And she pursued this supernatural ideal constantly 
ever afterward, while allowing herself to be governed by the 
wise counsels of her parents ; just as, arrived almost at woman- 
hood, she submitted unmurmuringly to the restraint's which her 
uncle Biancosi advised her to put upon her yearning after soli- 
tude. All through life, while pursuing with inflexible firmness 
the course of rigorous ascetical practices she deemed necessary 
for her own sanctification, she nevertheless was always found 
ready at a moment's notice to give up her loved solitude, the 
sweets of prayer and contemplation, and her penitential au- 
sterities, to minister to the good of others. She was admired 
and revered almost as much for her reserve, her discretion, 
her tact, her exceeding wisdom in counseling all sorts of per- 
sons, as she was for her devotion to the poor, the suffering, 
the ignorant, or for that spotless purity of life and exalted 
spirit of prayer which seemed to make her on earth a 
blessed soul enjoying the beatific vision. But our readers will 
take in our meaning better by comparing, on this head, the 
words and actions of other saints with those of Angela. Take, 
for instance, the prudence so necessary to the saints in 
moderating bodily austerities, when these are no longer 
necessary toward the repression of the sensual appetites, or 
the making the body most docile to all the workings of the 
Spirit. Hear what is said of St. Ignatius Loyola. 

'' He had learned by his own experience the true principles 
of that asceticism which perfects the moral nature without 
ruining the body, which carefully avoids all imperfect and 
false direction in the spiritual career, and which never allows 



AN'B THE URSULINES. 287 

the sentiment of feeling to predominate at the expense of 
reason and understanding. He used to say that in the first 
days of conversion men ought to lead a more severe life ; 
but from the time that the soul has come to a state of greater 
purity from its stains, exterior mortification should be some- 
Avhat diminished. We will cite here one example. He al- 
owed St. Francis Borgia at the beginning of his conversion, 
and while he was still Viceroy of Catalonia, to follow the im- 
pulse which led him to penitential austerities; but when he con- 
sidered that he had done enough, and that he seemed to attach 
too much importance to practices of this kind, he interposed 
his authority and regulated the practice of his spiritual exer- 
cises. As I consider in our Lord, Ignatius writes to him, 
that certain spiritual and corporal exercises are necessary at 
one time, and not so at another time, and that after having 
teen useful to us they are not so useful in the sequel, I luish 
to say to you, in the presence of the Divine Majesty, that 
which presents itself to my 7nind with regard to this matter, 
. . . First, as to what concerns the ti7ne you have prescribed 
to yourself for these i7iterior and exterior practices of prayer 
and penance, I thinlc the one half of them anight ie retrenched. 
For if in proportion as our thoughts are carried aioay either 
'by our otvn evil inclinations or by the devil to vain and un- 
lawful things, and if again in proportion as toe feel ourselves 
to be the more disposed to be attached to these unlawful things, 
we ought to multiply our practices of penance, so as to overcome 
our propensities, each one according to his disposition, or ac- 
cording to the variety of his thou§hts and temptations, that 
the will may take no pleasure in them nor consent to them ; so^ 
on the contrary, as these (evil) thoughts are put to flight and 
give place to holy iyispirations, it is our duty to give entrance 
to such inspirations into our mind, and to open ivide to tliem 
the gates of our soul. And, therefore, as you have no longer 



288 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

need of so much defensive armor to repel the enemy, I think in 
our Lord that you will do letter to employ the half of that 
time in the government of your estates, and in spiritual con- 
ferences and studies ; for in the future acquired science will 
he more necessary to you and more useful than infused Tcnoivl- 
edge. But, at the same time, endeavor to heep your soul in 
peace and repose, and ready to receive all the tvorJcings of our 
Lord in it. ... 

''In the second place, loith regard to fasting and abstinence, 
I thinh that it is better for the glory of our Lord to preserve 
and strengthen the stomach and other poivers of nature, than 
it is to debilitate them ; for, ivhen we have the fixed resolution 
rather to die than of deliberate purpose to commit the least of- 
fence against the Divine Majesty, and lohen loe are not at- 
tacked by any particular temptation from the devil, the world, 
or the flesh, exterior mortification is no longer necessary, Noio 
I am convinced that you are in this disposition of which I have 
been speaking, and that you are free from temptations j I desire, 
therefore, that you will fully master this thought — that the 
soul and the body are the gift of God, our Master and Creator, 
and that you will have to give Him a strict account of both, and 
that for His sake you ought not to enfeeble your bodily nature, 
because if you take aivay its strength the spiritual nature 
cannot act any longer loith the same energy. . . . We ought 
so much more to love the body, and to wish it tvell, the more it 
obeys and serves the soul ; and the soul in its turn finds in 
this obedience and assistance of the body increased strength 
and energy to serve and glorify God our Master and Creator. 

''As to the third point, namely, the chastisements ivhich you 
inflict upon your body : I would avoid, for our Lord's sake, to 
spill even the least drop of blood. If hitherto the Divine Maj- 
esty has given you, as I am convinced He has, a particular 
grace and attraction to this practice^ , . . I do not hesi- 



AND THE URSULINES. . 289 

tafe to affirm, . • . that it is better for the future to leave 
^ off these things, and, instead of trying to draw a little blood, 
to seek to unite yourself more closely luith the Lord of all, 
ashing of Him 7nore precious gifts, as, for example, the grace 
to shed a fountain of tears, or, at least, some feiu drops, 
whether it be for your own sifis or for those of others, or 
whether it be in contemplating the rnysteries of our Lord Jesus 
Christ in this Ufe or in the next, or in considering or loving 
the divine perfections. And these tears luill be the more 
precious and meritorius as the thoughts and meditatio7is 
which make them flotu shall be more elevated. And although 
in these several objects the third is in itself more perfect- than 
the second, and the second than the first, nevertheless that is 
the best for each individual in which the Lord our God the 
more abundantly communicates LLimself to him, and bestows 
on him a greater abundance of His holy gifts and spir- 
itual graces, for He hnoios and sees what is the most 
advantageous to him, and shotus him the way lohich he 
ought to Tceep, for He Tcnows all things. But in order that we 
may discover this by His grace, it is very useful to prove and 
try many ways, so that all may choose the one •which is the 
safest and the best for us in this life, and the most conducive 
to life eternal, Noiv among these gifts L recTcon those which it 
is not in our poiver to be possessed of at our will, but lohich 
are simply bestoioed upon us by the Giver of all good, such as 
are those which have a 7nore immediate relation with His Divine 
Majesty, namely, actual faith, hope, and charity — spiritual 
peace and joy, interior coiisolations, elevation of soul, divine 
impulses and lights, together with all other spiritual impres- 
sions and joys, having altvays regard to the due subordination 
between these gifts, and manifesting all respect and humble 
obedience to our Holy Mother the Church and to those who are 
appointed rulers and doctors in it, , , . I do not mean to 



290 ST. ANGELA MEEICI, 

say that we ouglit to seek these gifts simply for the pleasure 
they cause us j stilly all our thoughts, words, and actions, 
ivhich without them are cold, confused, and disorderly, would, 
through them lecome, to the greater glory of God, fervent, en- 
lightened, and just. And when the hody finds tliat it is in peril 
through its excessive exertions, the hest thing to le done is to 
seeTc for these gifts iy spiritual acts and other exercises talcen in 
moderation. It loill tlieyi come to pass that not anly will the 
soul le in a sotmd state, but there tvill be a sound mind diuell- 
ing in a sound body, and the whole man will be the more 
healthy and better disposed for the service of God.^^ ^ 

It is impossible to read this extract^ so pregnant with heavenly 
prndenc^ without remembering the wise practical rules for self- 
direction and the methods of governing others contained in St. 
Angela's " Eeminders'^ and '' Spiritual Testament/' as well as 
those interspersed here and there in her Constitutions. One 
is reminded, both in perusing what she has written and in 
reviewing the actions of her life, of the beautiful figure of 
Prudence sculptured by Giovanni Pisano on the Baptistery of 
Florence. She is represented as having a double head : the 
one is that of a young woman, whose face is toward the 
earth with its temptations and its cares, while in one hand 
she holds up a serpent, as if to warn off some assailant ; the 
other face is masculine and bearded, with the eyes fixed on the 
Eternal Hills. The head is surrounded with a halo — the 
attribute of supernatural sanctity. Such was the prudence 
of Angela with its twofold aspect, the soft, delicate, shrinking 
womanly nature ever using the wisdom of the serpent in 
dealing with a world full of deceit and danger ; while, on the 
other hand, she ever kept the eye of her soul turned heaven- 
ward, planting her foot from early girlhood resolutely on the 



1 Genelli, " Life of St. Ignatius Loyola,'' Meyrick's translation from tlie French. 



AND THE URSULINES, 291 

royal road of self-sacrifice^ and persisting in it with indomi- 
table courage. But this already brings us to the virtue of 
Fortitude. 

Of Temperance, in the case of Angela Merici, we need say 
but little. If by the word we understand the virtue which 
teaches us to moderate and keep in subjection not merely our 
unruly bodily appetites, but the passions and movements of 
the soul itself, we are forthwith reminded not only of the 
heroic generosity with which our saint subdued every evil 
inclination and kept in subjection these passions, which cause 
so much sin and misery, but was to the end of her life the 
perfect mirror of abstinence as she was of purity and gentle- 
ness. 

The natural virtue of Justice, as moralists explain it, 
consists in our rendering to the full whatever we owe to God, 
to the neighbor, and to ourselves. Her whole life was one 
uninterrupted effort to repay the Divine Goodness for all its 
gifts — with what supreme purity of intention, we know now, 
after reading the preceding chapters. Kor did she separate 
devotion to the good of the neighbor from her devotion to 
the glory of the Creator. The Company of St. Ursula, with 
its far-reaching services, proves abundantly how she paid to 
her kind the debt of her love. Nor did she forget to be just 
to herself — loving herself, so far as she might, as God loved 
her, and working till her last hour to make herself worthy of 
Him, by decking her soul with the ornaments of most per- 
fect righteousness. 

As it belongs to Prudence to see and to choose the road 
which leads to the highest moral perfection, and by it to 
the Most High God, so does it pertain to Fortitude to per- 
severe in it in spite of all obstacles, dangers, and difficulties. 
As we have shown, the way of Christian holiness is the com- 
panionship with Christ in labor and suffering — to the garden, 



292 ST, ANGELA MEBIGl 

the pillar, and the cross. The Maid of Desenzano never, so 
far as human evidence can attest it, separated herself from 
His blessed side, whose whole life, as St. Bonaventure 
expresses it, '* was a cross and a martyrdom." 

The heroic temper which buoyed up Angela in her formed 
purpose of founding the Company of St. Ursula never 
forsook her for a day amid the disheartening delays and 
constantly occurring difficulties of well-nigh forty years. And 
this she knew how to breathe into others. How she gave 
courage and energy to her companions, when after the loss 
of her eyesight they wished to return to Venice and give up 
their journey to the Holy Land ! And again, during the 
fearful perils of the storm at sea, how the strength which 
filled her own soul was communicated to all on board, enabling 
officers, crew, and passengers to work with a will in keeping 
the ship afloat, while trusting themselves unreservedly to 
God's keeping ! 

The fact is, that all these sweet womanly virtues which 
graced Angela's life and character, and these sterner qualities 
which gave her such invincible strength ^Ho bear and to 
forbear," were sustained, vivified, elevated, and perfected by 
the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, which 
are the fruits in the soul of the indwelling Spirit of God. Hers 
was the faith which, all through life, enabled the eye of her soul 
to behold God near her, as if the veil of mortality had been 
withdrawn. '' Blessed are the clean of heart : for they shall 
see God !" The perfect faith which the Holy Ghost, the 
Spirit of our adoption, bestows on willing souls, is that 
firm belief, instinct with charity and buoyed up by yearning 
hope, that He who is the Infinite God is as present to us as 
the atmosphere we breathe and the light that fills it by day 
— that He is present within us in our heart of hearts, prompt- 
ing its every aim and aspiration, its every affection, its deeds 



AND THE URSULINE8, 293 

of self-sacrifice and divinest generosity. Let any one read the 
"Meditation on Divine Loye'^ in the spiritual exercises of 
St, Ignatius Loyola^ spelling to himself slowly and patiently 
the characters and syllables of that most divine of human 
conceptions, and he will know what is the Faith — the 
illuminated eye of the soul — and what the Charity which 
accompanies true faith as necessarily as the warmth of the 
sun's rays is poured out with his light. Oh that our hearts 
could see as do those of the saints ! — that our life were as full 
of unceasing activity for God and the neighbor as His life is 
unceasingly devoted to our souls' welfare ! — that, like St. 
Ignatius and St. Angela Merici, our heart was so purified 
from all earthly affections, and the eye of our soul so un- 
clouded as to see in all that is fair and good and perfect here 
below but the reflection of His beauty and goodness and 
illimitable perfection — the streams descending from the ocean 
of all being and perfection, up which our souls may reascend 
to the Primal Source of life and love and joy eternal ! On 
this one absorbing vision of the One infinitely true and fair 
and good and lovable beyond all present thought, such pure 
souls as Angela's are set from the dawn of reason. As to St. 
Agnes, the little Roman maiden, so beautiful in the exquisite 
simplicity of her childlike character, so heavenly in the angelic 
light in which she beheld her Betrothed and the magnificences 
of the invisible world — so to Angela Merici there was One 
ever present who drew her eyes and her heart all to Himself, 
and left no room in her soul for other love. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ST. Angela's con^stitutioks. 

"We may fitly pause in spirit before the shrine of St. Angela 
Merici in the Church of St. Afra, and, while kneeling with the 
pilgrims from every land to look upon her venerable remains, 
and to adore that God whose glory shines forth so wonder- 
fully in His saints, cast our eyes upon the Constitutions 
which she has left behind, as upon the worthiest monument 
which could be placed beside her tomb. 

These Constitutions divinely given to her, as she herself 
hints repeatedly in her last instructions to her dear ones, 
were the mould in which were cast and formed these primitive 
Ursulines of Brescia, Cremona, and Milan, who so won the 
admiration and reverence of all Upper Italy during the last 
half of the sixteenth century, that France, the Low Countries, 
and all Germany were fain to possess them. What though 
the outward form changed with the new countries in which 
they were called to labor, and with the imperious necessities 
of the altered times and the increased labors they had to 
assume ? The apostolic spirit breathed by St. Angela into the 
Company of St. Ursula as trained and constituted by her, 
the mighty educational purpose which lay at the foundation 
of her institute, and the heroic virtues to which she had 
formed her daughters and which result necessarily from that 
formation — all passed into the congregated Ursulines of 

29J: 



AND THE URSULINE8. 295 

Milan, and from them into the glorious monasteries of Aix 
and Lyons, of Bordeaux and Paris. The spirit of St. Angela 
so lived in the hundreds of Ursuline establishments which 
flourished in France and the Netherlands, in Italy and Ger- 
many, before the calamitous events of the French Revolution 
and the Napoleonic Empire, that the dry-rot of tepidity or 
worldliness never touched these nurseries of true Christian 
womanhood. 

Nor have all the storms which have assailed, in these same 
countries, the impoverished and persecuted Ursuline monas- 
teries during the present century impaired in aught either 
the admirable fervor of these devoted teachers of youth, or 
the culture which they bestow on their precious charge. In 
New York, as in New Orleans and Quebec, as in Paris and 
Brussels, as in Bordeaux and Vienna and Rome, the Virginal 
Life of the daughters of Angela Merici sheds the same 
heavenly fragrance all over the land, and bears the same 
undying fruits for Christian homes and public society. 

The study of these Constitutions, therefore, the principal 
literary work bequeathed to us by St. Angela, is of deep 
interest to the statesman as well as the churchman — to every 
class of enlightened readers, indeed. 

Travelers through Italy who have paused in Assisi to visit 
the shrine of St. Francis will remember the beautiful little 
Church of ^^the Portiuncula,'' preserved, like a casket of 
gems, within the splendid temple erected above and around 
it by the faith and piety of generations. The lowly little 
Oratory of the Portiuncula was the first possession ever 
bestowed on the seraphic saint and his followers — the first 
spot which they might call their own to worship God in with- 
out let or hindrance. When afterwards arose that stupendous 
structure on which Christian artists lovingly lavished, century 
after century, the tribute of their genius, they had no thought 



296 ST. ANGELA MERIGI, 

of disturbing the primitive chapel in which the sweet saint 
loved to refresh his soul in prayer. They covered it, on the 
contrary, with artistic gems, the love-offerings of the Christian 
heart to the cradle of a mighty religious Order. 

Even so will the Ursulines of our day, no matter what may 
be the congregation which claims their jBlial homage, cherish 
this first cradle of their Order, and preserve it intact with 
infinite reverence, while never ceasing to be grateful to God 
for the more perfect Constitutions given to them, respectively, 
by the Vicar of Christ on earth. 

IK THE iq-AME OF THE MOST HOLY TKIKITY. 

The Rule of the Company of St. Ursula of Brescia, 

As it hath pleased God, my beloved daughters and sisters> 
to draw you out of the darkness of this miserable world, and 
to unite you in the service of His Divine Majesty, you are 
bound to return Him endless thanksgiving for having be- 
stowed on you after so special a manner this singular favor. 
For how many exalted personages are there not — empresses, 
queens, duchesses, and the like — who, in view of their own 
greater glory and happiness, would be glad to be your humble 
handmaidens, considering how much more noble and enviable 
your condition is ? Wherefore, dear sisters, I exhort, or 
rather, I beseech you, who have been chosen to be most truly 
the chaste spouses of the Son of God, to consider how great, 
how unheard-of, and how admirable is the dignity thus 
conferred on you ; and then to endeavor by every means 
within your power to remain ever worthy of the title by which 
you are called. Seek to find and follow ev^ery path that can lead 
you infallibly to this happy result, and in this path persevere 
to the end. For no good beginning avails that is not crowned 
by perseverance. These persons alone can save themselves 



AND THE URSULINES. 297 

without difficulty who are willing to profit by all the neces- 
sary ways and means. For there is but little difference in 
saying to one's self, I am resolved to serve God no longer, and 
in making up one's mind to reject the means and neglect the 
rules which can alone help one to remain faithful in God's 
service. 

Hence the greater is the need which we have, dear sisters, 
to be watchful in this matter, that we are the more called 
upon to be so by the sublime dignity of our rank of affianced 
brides to the Son of God, and destined queens of His king- 
dom. Wherefore, also, the greater need of wariness and 
prudence, that what we have engaged ourselves to accomplish 
is of infinite importance. We must bear in mind that we 
shall meet on our path all manner of formidable obstacles. 
We are surrounded with dangers and snares. Our bodily 
appetites and senses are not dead. And there are our sworn 
enemies, " the world, the flesh, and the devil ;'^ the last rag- 
ing and roving around us, seeking by every artifice to surprise 
and devour us. Let not this, however, terrify us, dear sisters. 
H in all future time you are resolved to live as becomes those 
who are in very truth the brides of the Redeemer, and to 
keep this Rule as the way by which you have to walk and in 
which all is ordained for your good, I firmly trust and hope 
in the Divine Goodness that we shall not only overcome all 
difficulties and dangers, but that our victory shall be attended 
with such honor and joy, that our little day of life shall seem 
to be all consolation, that grief and sadness shall be changed 
into sweetness and exultation : every thorny and stony path 
shall become flowery, smooth, pleasant, and filled with golden 
splendors.^ There the angels and the heavenly choirs shall 
keep us company so long as we lead like them an angelic life. 



1 Le strade spinose, erte, e sassosi faransi a noi floride, plane, gioconde, e di flmssimo 
oro coperte. 



298 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

Let us then, dearest sisters, all together take this rule to our 
hearts, coming as it does to us from the hand of God. Let 
the careful observance thereof be to you what the arms of 
Judith were, enabling her to cut off the head of Holofernes. 
"We too shall cut down our enemy the devil, and gloriously 
enter Heaven, triumphing there to the joy of both Heaven 
and earth. 

Wherefore, with the aid of God's grace, open your ears and 
your heart to these precepts. 

CHAPTER I. — HOW POSTULANTS AEE TO BE ADMITTED. 

Let every one who desires to be received into this Company 
bear in mind, above all things, that she must be a virgin. 
Then, having moreover the firm purpose of serving God in 
our way of life, she must come to us cheerfully and of her 
own free-will. Thirdly, she must not be one who has bound 
herself to enter any monastery, or who was disappointed by 
a human lover. Fourthly, if she has a father, a mother, or 
other superiors, she must begin by obtaining their permission. 
The lady-directresses of the Company may, if needful, see the 
latter and speak to them, whenever without a legitimate 
reason they should chance to oppose their charge in their 
wish to take on themselves the yoke of our holy obedience. 
Fifthly, the postulant must have attained the age at least of 
twelve years, before asking to be received ; she must be fifteen 
before receiving the habit, and being admitted to the chapter ; 
and she must be from eighteen to twenty when the time 
comes for her receiving the veil and having her name inscribed 
on the Company's register. Let those who are under age 
remember that they can only be admitted among us for the 
purpose of being trained to our way of life. 



AND THE UMSULINES, 299 

CHAPTER II. — THE HABIT WORIT IK THE COMPANY. 

Be it also borne in mind that the dress worn by us should 
be becoming and simple, such as maidenly modesty demands. 
Each one must wear her dress covering the entire figure, and 
over it let her wear a linen veil of good texture, but by no 
means transparent like cambric. Of this same quality should 
be the other stuffs. The garments should be of woollen cloth, 
or serge, and of a dark color. [Let them also wear a long 
leathern cincture as a badge both of exterior and interior 
mortification, and of perfect chastity ; and it is hereby 
declared that the habit proper to the virgins of this Company 
consists in the veil of linen and the leathern cincture. This 
habit shall be forfeited by any one of the members who for 
disobedience to the superiors, or for any other reason, shall be 
dismissed from the Company ; and any one who would refuse 
to lay the habit aside after dismission would incur the 
penalty of excommunication, as it has been decreed by the 
illustrious and most Reverend Charles (Borromeo) Cardinal 
of St. Prasede, Visitor Apostolic, and at present a canonized 
saint.] Their slippers, sandals, and shoes shall be black, 
simple, and of becoming shape. Their underclothing must 
have no embroideries ; they must not, finally, wear any of 
the fashionable vanities in vogue, which might leave a stain 
on their own conscience, be a cause of scandal to the neighbor, 
or appear to be in opposition with virginal modesty. 

CHAPTER III. — THE MAN^KER OF LIYIKG 1^ THE WORLD. 

They must, moreover, bear in mind : firstly, to have noth- 
ing to do with women of ill-repute ; secondly, that they must 
never consent to receive messages from anj? man or woman, 
particularly secret messages ; thirdly, that they are not to 



300 ST, ANGELA MERICI, 

go to weddings, balls, carousals, and other sucli spectacles 
where worldlings have their pleasure ; fourthly, that, for many 
reasons, they are to avoid standing on balconies, beneath 
doorways, or in the streets ; fifthly, that in passing through 
the public highways they should have their eyes cast down, 
their garments modestly closed and gathered up ; they should 
go on their way quickly without loitering or stopping here 
and there, or standing still to admire anything whatever ; 
for in all places they may find manifold danger, and hidden 
snares of the enemy ; sixthly, whenever their mothers or 
other persons placed above them in the world would expose 
them to any such dangers, or prevent them from fasting, 
praying, going to confession, or any other such good work, 
they are to lay the matter before the lady-directresses of the 
Company, who will provide a remedy. 

CHAPTER IV. — OK FASTIJSTG. 

They are also to remember that each one ought and must 
practise fasting from bodily aliment, as a thing that is nec- 
essary and as a means for practising spiritual abstinence, by 
which all mental vices and errors are extirpated. We are 
evidently called on to^ do so by the example of all holy per- 
sons and by the whole tenor of Christ's life, which is for us 
the sole way leading to Heaven. This also is what the Church 
our mother sounds in the ears of all her children, saying to 
God (in the Preface for Lent) : '' Thou who by bodily fast- 
ing dost repress vice, lift up the soul, and bestow both vir- 
tue and its reward.'' ' Just as gluttony was the source of all 
our woe, even so is it befitting that abstinence become the 
origin and means of all our spiritual weal and increase. 
Hence, we exhort every one of you to observe as a special 



1 Qiii coi^porali jejvnio I'itia comprimis, mentem elevas, virhitem largiris et pre^nid- 



AND THE URSULIXES. 301 

fasting day each of the following days throughout the year, 
oyer and above the fasts prescribed by our Holy Mother the 
Church. 

1. We must fast during the whole of Advent. 

2. We must fast three days each week, beginning with the 
Wednesday following the second Sunday after the Epiphany. 

3. We must fast, beginning with the week following the 
octave of Easter, three days in each week, namely, Wednes- 
day, Friday, and Saturday. 

4. We must fast on the three Kogation Days, or the three 
days immediately preceding the feast of the Ascension, dur- 
ing which the Church chants the Litanies in solemn procession 
to obtain the divine assistance for the Christian people. 

5. We must fast and persevere in prayer, every day after 
the Ascension to the coming down of the Holy Ghost — that 
is, ^^the Easter in May" — beseeching the fulfillment of 
Christ's magnificent promises to His elect and to all who 
are intent on good works. 

Inasmuch, however, as nothing is here demanded that is 
not in accordance with reason and discretion, let no one un- 
dertake the above fasts without the advice of the spiritual 
father, and of the lady-directresses of this Company, to 
whom it belongs to modify the number of these fasts as ne- 
cessity may demand. 

CHAPTER V. — 0^ PRAYER. 

Bear also in mind that each one of you should be diligen 
in what regards prayer, both mental and vocal ; for prayer 
goes always hand in hand with fasting, even as the Scripture 
saith : '^ Prayer is good with fasting ;'' ^ and hence we read 
in the Gospel of Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, that she 



* Tobias xii. 8. 



302 ST, ANGELA MERIGl 

'^departed not from the Temple, by fasting, and prayers 
serying night and day ;" ^ and as by fasting one mortifies 
one's bodily appetites and senses, even so by prayer one ob- 
tains from God the real gift of spiritual life. Wherefore, 
considering our constant need of the divine assistance, we 
should apply mind and heart to the task of praying without 
intermission. AVe also, and by all means, recommend the fre- 
quent use of Yocal prayer, which, by making us collect our 
senses, disposes the soul to mental prayer. Let every one of 
you, then, recite daily at least the Office of the Blessed Vir- 
gin Mary and the seven Penitential Psalms, with attention 
and fervor ; since, in reciting the Office, we converse with 
our Lord. Those who do not know how to recite the Office 
should learn from those who do. As to such as cannot read, 
let them recite daily, at the hour of Matins, thirty-three 
times the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary in honor of the 
thirty-three years of our Lord's mortal life. At Prime let 
them say the same seven times, to obtain the seven gifts of 
the Holy Ghost ; and so at each of the other hours — Tierce, 
Sext, Xone, Vespers, and Complin. And in order both to 
afford matter for mental prayer, and to open some sort of a 
way to it, we exhort every one of you to lift her soul to God 
every day and to exercise herself in this manner of praying, 
saying, in the secret of her heart, the following or some 
other such form of prayer : 

" Lord ! shed thy light on the dark places of my heart, 
and grant me the grace rafcher to die than ever offend Thy 
Divine Majesty. Give stability, Lord ! to my affections 
and sentiments, so that they may cause me to commit no 
transgression, nor to take my eyes away from the light of 
Thy countenance, which is the sweet comfort of every afflict- 



» St. Luke ii. 37. 



AND THE URSULINES, 303 

ed soul. Oh, with what bitterness I feel, as I look into my 
own heart, how I should blush to lift my eyes to Thee, know- 
ing as I do that I deserve to be buried in hell ! Besides, 
when I consider the errors of my ways, my spiritual deform- 
ity, my baseness, the monstrous perversity of my actions, the 
fearful fancies and figures that haunt my imagination, I am 
compelled night and day, whether I walk or stand, work or 
reflect, to cry out to Heaven, and to implore Thee, my God ! 
to pity me and grant me time to do penance. 

^^ Vouchsafe, therefore, Lord ! to pardon all my sins, all 
my faults — everything in which I have offended Thee since 
my baptism. Vouchsafe also, Lord ! to forgive the sins of 
my father and mother, of my relatives and friends, and of 
all mankind. I beseech Thee to do so by Thy most sacred 
Passion, by Thy precious Blood shed for the love of us, by 
Thy Holy Name of Jesus, which I beg all earth and Heaven, 
all the choirs of angels and archangels, to bless and praise 
eternally. 

^' I am heartily sorry, Lord I to have begun so late to 
serve Thy Divine Majesty. Wretch that I am, I have never, 
up to this moment, shed so much as one drop of my blood 
for love of Thee ; I have cared so little to be obedient to Thy 
law, that the most trifling misfortune would fill me with 
bitterness, loving Thee so little as I did. 

'' My God, I grieve and feel my heart wrung with pain at 
seeing all these unhappy creatures of Thine, who are so blind 
as not to know Thee, who have no care of being made sharers 
in the merits of Thy sacred Passion. Most willingly would 
I, were it in my power, give my life to have the veil removed 
from their eyes. 

" Wherefore, my Lord and my God, Thou who art my 
life and my hope ! I beseech Thee to take this unworthy and 
unclean heart of mine, and to cleanse and chasten it in the 



304 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

furnace of Thy love. I beg Thee, Lord ! to take from me 
all self-will, which, infected and blinded by sin, is nnable to 
distinguish good from eyil. Accej)t, then, Lord ! every 
thought and word and action of mine — everything, indeed, 
whether interior or exterior, that belongs to me. I place 
all here at the feet of Thy Divine Majesty, entreating Thee 
not to reject it, all unworthy as my offering may be.^^ 

CHAPTEK YI. — ON HEARIi^G MASS DAILY. 

Let every one go to Mass daily, and hear at least one with 
all modesty and devotion. In this adorable Sacrifice are con- 
tained in the most wonderful way all the merits of the Pas- 
sion of our dear Lord. The greater the attention, the faith, 
the contrition of the assistants, the greater must be the 
share they have in these blessed merits, and the deeper the 
consolation derived therefrom. Thus you may communicate 
spiritually. However, you must not loiter too long in the 
church. If you are moved to make a longer prayer, go and 
shut yourself up in your room, and there pray as the Spirit 
of God and your own conscience shall dictate to you. 

CHAPTER YII. — ON CONFESSIOK. 

You are exhorted to go frequently to confession, in order 
there to receive the remedy needful to the wounds of our 
souls. Let every one present herself to the priest, as she 
would to God, our Eternal Judge ; and there, grieving 
with heartfelt sorrow and a firm purpose of renouncing every- 
thing sinful, let her confess her sins and ask pardon therefor. 
Let her kneel before her confessor with the reverence ex- 
pected from persons of solid piety. Besides, you must 
not forget that a particular place or church must be desig- 
nated in which all must meet on the first Friday of each 



AND THE URSULINES. 305 

month, and there receive communion from the spiritual 
father. Moreover, we exhort each of you to confess and 
receive communion in her own parish church on the great 
feasts of the year. 

CHAPTER YIII. — 01^ 0BEDIE:S'CE. 

We exhort each of you to observe holy obedience, which is 
the only and true renouncement of one's own will. Obedi- 
ence grounded in charity is, in the soul of man, like a great 
light, in whose brightness all his works are made good and 
acceptable. To have this light, let every one of you, first of 
all, observe the Divine Precepts ; for it is written : " They 
are accursed who decline from Thy commandments.'^ ^ Next, 
we must obey the commandments of our Holy Mother the 
Church, of whom the Truth hath said : " He that heareth 
you, heareth Me ; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me." ^ 
In the third place, you must obey your own bishop and 
pastor, your spiritual father, the lady-directresses and other 
superiors of the Cc mpany. In the fourth place, you must 
obey your parents and the other persons placed above you at 
home, of whom we advise you to ask pardon once a week in 
sign of your obedience and of the love you bear them. 
Fifthly, you must obey the laws and ordinances of the civil 
magistrates. There is, besides, obedience due to our in- 
terior inspirations, when on the judgment and approbation 
of the spiritual father we know them to be from the Spirit 
of God. 

To resume : we are bound to obey God for love of Him, 
and, following the injunction of the Apostle, we should be 
subject '^to every human creature for God's sake," ^ where 
what is commanded is not opposed to the divine honor, to 
our own, or to our eternal salvation. 



1 Ps. cxviii. 21. 2 St. Luke x. 16. » 1 Peter ii. 13 



306 8T. ANGELA MEBICI, 



CHAPTEK IX. — OK YIRGINITY. 

Eace: one must be careful to preserve holy virginity ; and 
this, not because our Rule binds any one to make a vow of 
virginity, but because every one should form the firm pur- 
pose of keeping her virginal treasure entire for God. For vir- 
ginity is so highly prized, that she is called the sister of the 
angels, the conqueror of all sensual appetites, the queen of 
virtues, and the mistress of all spiritual treasures. "Whence 
it behooveth every one of you so to conduct herself in all 
things, that she be conscious of doing nothing toward her- 
self or in presence of others that might seem unbecoming a 
bride of the Most High God. Therefore, above all things, 
let her keep her heart pure, and her conscience free from 
every evil thought, from every shadow of envy, ill-will, dis- 
sension, rash judgment — in a word, from every sinful emotion 
and desire. On the contrary, let her be joyous, filled with 
charity, faith, and trust in God. 

In conversing with the neighbor, let us be sensible and 
modest, observing the counsel of the Apostle : " Let your 
modesty be known to all men :^'^ thereby every action and 
word of ours shall be decorous and well-timed. We must not 
pronounce lightly the name of God ; nor use expressions like 
an oath, but simply say '^ No, no ;^^ ''Yes, yes,'^ even as 
our Lord taught us ; nor give haughty answers ; nor do what 
we are asked with ill grace ; nor keep up anger ; nor mur- 
mur ; nor ever relate what we saw that was evil ; nor, in 
fine, must we ever be seen doing an action, or making so 
much as a gesture, that could be deemed unseemly, especially 
in one who glories in being Christ's handmaiden. Let all 
our words and actions and movements be such as to edify 
and teach those who know us intimately, proceeding always 

» Philippians iv. 5. 



AND THE URSULmES, 307 

from a heart inflamed with charity. Furthermore, each one 
of us should be disposed to die rather than ever consent to 
soil what is her sacred joy and her treasure. 

CHAPTER X. — ON POVERTY. 

"We exhort every one of you to embrace poverty, not merely 
that which rids us of all love of temporal wealth, but above 
all that poverty of our spirit, by which the soul puts away 
from herself, all attachment to and hope of created and 
transitory things, indeed, all love of one's self ; placing 
all her treasures in God, and esteeming herself, without God, 
poor in all things, and herself a mere nothing ; while, pos- 
sessed of God, she possesses all things. This is what the 
Gospel says : '^ Blessed are the poor in spirit !" ^ For this 
purpose, let each one set herself about divesting herself of all 
things, and placing all her wealth, her love, her delight, not 
in dress, or in eating and drinking, or in her parents and 
relatives, or in herself or her personal foresight and wisdom ; 
but in God alone, and in His fatherly and infinitely wise 
providence. This is why our Lord hath said : '' Seek ye, 
therefore, first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all 
these things shall be added unto you.^'^ Again He saith : 
" Be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for 
your body, what you shall put on. . . . For your Father 
knoweth that you have need of all these things.^' ^ 

chapter XI. — 0^ the G0YER5TMEKT AISTD OFFICERS OF THE 

COMPANY. 

Just as the Council of Trent has enjoined on all bishops 
to have a care of those who lead the virginal life and live 
under the regular discipline of monasteries ; even so are 

1 St. Matthew v. 3. a xbid., vi. 33. » Ibid., 25, 33. 



308 8T, ANGELA MEBICI, 

bishops and pastors bound to have no less care of those who 
lead the virginal life and have resolved to lead it forever 
wJiile remaining within their own homes. Indeed, a greater 
care would seem to be needful to the latter, w^hose perils are 
greater and more numerous. Therefore it is that the Com- 
pany of Virgins who combat under the standard and name 
of St. Ursula, recognizing and obeying as their father, pastor, 
and superior the present Bishop of Brescia, and every one 
of his lawful successors, submit themselves to his obedience, 
and recommend themselves to his fatherly and pastoral care. 

CHAPTER XII. — OF THE FATHER OF THE EKTIRE COMPANY. 

And because the care of so large a diocese would not per- 
mit the bishop to occupy himself with all the concerns of our 
Company, in the measure which would be necessary to main- 
tain and advance its prosperity, it is indispensable that he 
should have a vicar placed over it, whom all should accept as 
their Father, and as the superior placed over them by the 
bishop, and selected to fill the latter's place — a man to 
whom all must render the obedience which is due to him. 

As it belongs to the episcopal office to select this Father 
and to place him over the whole Company of St. Ursula, as 
his own vicar, so is it his privilege to confirm him, or to 
change him at his owm discretion, when he shall know this 
to be expedient or more useful to the Company. 

This Father will have charge of all that regards the ad- 
vancement of the Company, making it his duty to remove 
every obstacle which may present itself in the general govern- 
ment thereof, or arise from the conduct of some individual 
subjects, and having recourse to the episcopal authority 
whenever it is necessary. 

The ladies who are charged with the government of the 



AND THE URSULINES. 309 

Ooinpany may not convene a general congregation without 
the said Father being present thereat, or without his formal 
permission and approval ; wherefore, all the acts of such con- 
gregation in which the said Father wo aid not be present, or 
which would be held without his consent, are to be considered 
as null and void. 

The maidens who ask to be admitted into the Company 
must be first examined and approved by the Father ; and 
should any one be admitted without such examination and 
approbation, she is in no wise to be considered to be admit- 
ted, till she has been by him examined and approved. 

CHAPTER XIII. — 0^ THE SUBSTITUTE. 

It is proper that there should be given to the spiritual 
father, as a substitute and coadjutor, some other priest. 
For, because of the increase of members and the extension of 
the Company, it would become a very difficult matter for a 
single priest to suffice for all the demands upon him, while, 
on the other hand, the first Father hapj)ening to fail or to 
be absent, it would be needful to have another used to the 
spiritual government of the Company, and taking a heciriy 
interest in its welfare. 

This substitute shall .only have, in what regards the Com- 
pany, such powers as the bishop may give him, and shall 
only act under the direction of the Father of the Company. 

On the two feast days which we particularly celebrate, 
those, namely, of St. Catherine and St. Agnes, the solemnity 
must be honored by the presence of the bishop, and timely 
invitation must be sent him, so as to allow him to be with 
us in good season. This must be more particularly observed 
when on either of these feasts any of our sisters are, 
through greater devotion and a desire of higher perfection, to 



310 ST, ANGELA MERICl 

make a public yow of virginity. We here declare that such 
Yows, although made in public, are not intended to be other 
than simple vows. If on these feast days the bishop cannot 
be present, the Father of the Company will do what is need- 
ful. 

CHAPTER XIY. — OK THE MOTHEE OF THE WHOLE COMPANY. 

There shall be one Mother and Superior of the whole 
Company, whose office shall be for life, and who shall be 
chosen by the two thirds of the members conYcned for the 
election, in the presence of the bishop, or, at least, in that 
of the Father of the Company, and the person thus chosen 
shall have no authority till she has been confirmed therein 
by the bishop. 

For this election of tlie Mother shall be convened all the 
Lady-Directresses, and all the Mistresses, the Counselors {Av- 
visatrici), with all the sisters who have been received into the 
Company ; and the assembled electors shall be expressly ad- 
monished to select the member most distinguished for her 
edifying life, one of exemplary conduct, and tried by long 
years in the practice of all the virtues ; so that she may pos- 
sess over all the moral authority necessary toward directing 
and leading them to that perfection of life which should be 
the aim of all, and toward maintaining therein so many 
souls, the servants and brides of our Lord. Above all, let 
this person be known as a woman of eminent charity and 
tenderness toward the young members of this Company, so 
that in all their needs she may prove herself one who with a 
ready motherly heart can help and comfort them. 

"When they are assembled to elect the Mother, let each one 
have with her a paper on which is written the name of her 
chosen candidate, and this she shall place, folded, in a box 
prepared for that purpose in the room. 



AND THE URSULmES. 311 

If a person with the above qualities can be found among the 
maiden sisters of the Company, she ought to be preferred to 
a widow, inasmuch as the former belongs to a higher condi- 
tion, to that indeed of those over whom she has to be placed 
as Mother. In such a person, too, it is more likely to find a 
deeper love and tenderness for the Company, whose child she 
is and on whose milk she has been fed. Nor is it unlikely 
that in her shall shine forth with greater lustre all the vir- 
tues necessary to such a Mother, and in the practice of which 
a maiden sister had always lived. 

When, however, because of immature years or other rea- 
sons, a proper person cannot be found among the maiden 
sisters, let a widow be chosen on whom God hath bestowed 
more abundantly than on the others the gifts above enumer- 
ated. 

The Mother should hold her office till death, unless her 
great age or serious infirmities should disable her, or that^ for 
some other cause connected with the greater good of the 
Company, the bishop should deem it expedient to have 
another chosen. 

Although in choosing the Mother greater regard should be 
had to maturity of spirit and tried constancy in virtue than 
to ripe years ; nevertheless, it seems becoming that she 
should not be under forty years of age when elected, and 
that she should have been ten years a member of the Com- 
pany, if a maiden sister, or, if she be a widow, she must 
have moreover filled the office of vicar during ten years. 

CHAPTER XY.— THE MOTHER YICAR. 

liT order that the body of the Company should never on 
any occasion remain without a head to rule and govern it, it is 
of great importance that a vicar should be given to the 



312 



ST. ANGELA MEUICI 



Mother^ to hold the latter' s place when absent, and to aid her 
in every emergency. 

In the vicar should be found, let us say it briefly, the re- 
quirements and qualities demanded by such an office, which 
are none other than those which we have mentioned as neces- 
sary to the Mother herself. 

The Mother Yicar shall be elected with the formalities 
prescribed for that of the Mother, and must, like her, be 
confirmed by the bishop. 

Although the Vicar fills the Mother's place during her ab- 
sence, she may not in her absence introduce any innovation, 
or change anything decreed by the Mother. Her duty shall 
simply be to execute the Mother's ordinances or such meas- 
ures as are prescribed by the Eule or otherwise decreed. 

On all occasions she shall hold the first place after the 
Mother, whose vicar she is. 

When the Mother is present, the Vicar's authority shall 
not differ in any way from that of the other assistants ; in 
the absence of the Mother, she shall possess just the measure 
of authority granted to her by the Mother, on whom, while 
she lives, the Vicar has to depend in everything. 

When the Mother dies, the government passes into the 
hands of the vicar till the election of a new Mother, when 
the vicar's ofiice ends. To the vicar belongs to perform all 
that is needful for the burial of the dead Mother as well as 
for the election of a new Mother, according to the ordinances 
of the Company. 

She can not lawfully, either during the lifetime of the 
Mother, or during the interval between her death and the 
election of a successor, admit either to the chapter or into 
the body of the Company any maiden-sister, even though 
the assistants and the lady-directresses should consent to her 
doinir so. And what is here said of admissions must be also 



AND THE URSULINES. 313 

understood of dismissions from the Company. This must be 
reserved to the Mother to whose office it properly belongs ; 
and we hereby declare that all admissions or dismissions 
occurring during the absence or death of the Mother are 
absolutely null. 

The yicar shall make no outlay that is not usual or de- 
manded by urgent necessity during such absence or death. 

Although the office of the vicar and of the assistants 
expires with the creation of a new Mother, the vicar can be 
continued in her charge, should the general congregation 
judge this expedient in view of the divine glory, and the 
utility of the Company, 

CHAPTER XYI. — THE ASSISTANTS. 

Although it has been settled that there shall be but one 
Mother Superior of the whole Company, in conformity with 
the wise opinion which prefers the government of the one to 
that of the many ; nevertheless, taking into consideration the 
great needs of all these servants of Christ our Lord, exposed 
as they are to manifold and various perils of soul and body ; 
and considering also that the unaided strength of a single 
person cannot provide for so great a family without the risk 
of harm or disorder among her charge — we deem it necessary 
to give to the Mother four other ladies as her assistants, with 
whom she can confer and consult concerning all the affairs 
and needs of the entire Company, or which may relate to any 
one of its subjects. 

Let the Mother Superior hold no deliberation on matters 
of any importance relating either to the common welfare or 
•the good of individuals, without the advice and consent of 
the majority of her assistants or of at least two of them — and 
this in order that the deliberations should be conducted with 



314 ST, ANGELA MERIGl 

more light, more prudence, more aid from the Holy Spirit, 
to the greater glory of our Lord, and the increase of peace 
and progress of the Company, as well as the riper benefits for 
all its subjects. For it is a thing on which all men have 
agreed, that the eyes of two persons see more than those of 
one. 

The qualities required in the assistants, as is evident from 
the nature of their office, should resemble those demanded of 
the Mother Superior herself. They shall be chosen by the 
same electors and in the same form as the Mother ; imme- 
diately after her, and with the approbation of the bishop. 

"What was said above of the Mother Superior must also be 
said of them ; they should be riper in mind and virtue than 
in years. Nevertheless, for very just reasons, no one should 
be elected to the office of assistant, who has not passed her 
thirtieth year ; and if they are maiden sisters, they must have 
had ten years of membership in the Company ; and if widows, 
they must have spent five years in governing the Company. 

Their office is not for life, but expires with the Mother, 
with whom they were elected. They may be confirmed in 
their charge at the election of a new Mother ; and should any 
one of them die before the Mother, another person is to be 
chosen in her stead by the Mother, the remaining assistants, 
the lady-directresses, the mistresses, and counselors, in pres- 
ence of the Father and with his consent. 

The office of the assistants consists in affording as much 
help as possible to the Mother. Let them meet once in the 
week to consult together on such affairs as have to be dis- 
patched to provide for all the pressing needs of the Company 
at large or of particular members. Hence they must not call 
together the lady-directresses save when this can be done 
without inconvenience, and v/hen some grave and urgent 
necessity occurs to which they are not equal. 



AND THE VBSULINES. 315 

One of the assistants shall be selected to take the Mother^s 
place in keeping the moneys of the Company, as well as a full 
account of receipts and payments. She must carry out with 
diligence and charity whatever shall be determined by the 
assistants in council or what shall be ordered by the Mother. 
To fill such a charge as this, the person selected must be one 
who, in the judgment of all, shall have displayed equal ability 
and experience in treating business matters as well as in her 
own household management. 

What has been said about the Mother should be reaffirmed 
of the assistants and of all persons fit to govern the Company ; 
when subjects are found among the maiden-sisters dis- 
tinguished for prudence, charity, and other shining virtues, 
they are always to be preferred to ladies who are not of 
maidenly condition, and that for the reasons already 
enumerated. 

CHAPTER XYII. — OK THE LADY-DIRECTRESSES. 

CocN'SiDERii^'G the large number (ever increasing through 
the blessing of our Lord) of His servants and spouses, and 
hoping for a still larger increase, and for the purpose of secur- 
ing to them better government with greater security and 
provision against every need, let there be elected also eight 
ladies, distinguished for their practical judgment, their 
prudence, and other ripe virtues, more even than for their 
advanced age, to each of whom one district of the eight into 
which the city has been divided shall be made over that she 
may have a special and loving care of the sister maidens living 
in that district, which should also be her own place of resi- 
dence. Below shall be found the rules and methods to be 
followed by each in governing her little Sock. 

These lady-directresses are to be elected and confirmed in 



316 ST. ANGELA MERIGI, 

the manner prescribed for the assistants and for the Mother ; 
and when any one of them is taken away by death or other- 
wise, let another be chosen in her place by the Mother, the 
assistants, the lady-directresses, and all the others who meet 
to elect the assistants. 

To these lady-directresses it will belong to make known all 
the needs both of the Company in general, and of their own 
charge in particular. ISTo one of them, howeyer, may busy 
herself with the concerns of another lady-directress's charge 
— unless she be impelled to do so by informing such lady- 
directress of what relates to persons subject to the latter, and 
in order to enable her to provide a proper remedy. Should 
the latter, however, neglect to do so, then the matter can be 
laid before the Mother and her assistants, that they may see 
to it in their wisdom. 

No postulant shall be presented by any person to the 
Father or to the Mother of the Company, either to receive 
the habit, or to be accepted and admitted into the Company, 
or to make the vows, unless such postulant shall have been 
first examined by the lady-directress of the district in which 
such postulant lives. Moreover, the mistress who in this 
same district is like the executive of the lady- directress, 
should also beforehand have had information about such 
postulant. Furthermore, the Mother Superior herself of the 
whole Company may not accept or present for acceptation to her 
council of government any maiden whatever, without follow- 
ing the order prescribed here ; and this, in order that every- 
thing may be done with greater regularity and uniformity, 
and that these maidens may be well known and carefully 
examined, who are to be accepted or who are preparing to 
be accepted in the future. 

Whenever it happens that one of the lady-directresses is 
chosen to be assistant to the Mother, another directress is to 



ANB THE URSULINES. 317 

be elected in her place, who shall replace the new assistant in 
hor charge over the maiden-sisters. 

What has been said of the proper age of the assistants 
applies equally to the lady-directresses. 

CHAPTER XYIII. — THE OFFICE OF THE LADY-DIRECTRESSES. 

The ladies should inform themselves minutely about the 
maiden -sisters intrusted to their care. Let them know the 
name (rf each, with that of her abode and family ; let them 
be acquainted with the rank and condition of each, with their 
habits, their conduct, and their conversation both inside and 
outside their homes. 

Let them see to it that the sisters are most diligent in 
putting into practice all the prescriptions of the Eule as 
taught them by the mistresses. This they can make sure of 
by making the former give an account from time to time of 
the lessons taught them by the latter. With those in particu- 
lar whom they suspect of carelessness, of tepidity, or of little 
liking for spiritual things, or who are exposed to some great 
danger, they must exercise a more diligent watchfulness. 

Let them also know who is the confessor appointed for 
each, and endeavor to ascertain whether the sisters are 
punctual in receiving the sacraments of Penance and 
Eucharist on the days prescribed, if they are constant in 
going to the same confessor, or if they like to change. Let 
them try especially to know if the sisters are in need of help 
either for their bodily or for their spiritual wants. 

And, although our chief concern should be about the soul, 
nevertheless it is a duty of charity to bestow also help on 
the body — especially when sickness or poverty has reduced 
any of the maiden-sisters to real want. For, then, it should 
be seen to that bodily want become not a danger for the soul 
itself. 



318 ST. ANGELA MERICI 

This motherly care must increase whenever any one belong- 
ing to their charge is drawing near her last hour ; then, two 
sisters, judged the most able to assist the sufferer in her 
extreme need, should be sent to remain with her. 

When any sister dies, her lady-directress should provide for 
all that is necessary toward her funeral service and burial, 
notifying the spiritual father and the Mother Superior, that 
these also may do their duty. 

They shall have the greatest care of the novices, making 
the mistresses and counselors visit them, and seeking by every 
means to obtain a detailed knowledge of their habits and way 
of living ; so that when the time comes for admitting these 
to the chapter or unto the Company, the ladies may be able 
to give certain and truthful information concerning them to 
the other directresses. 

Every directress should call to her the mistress and coun- 
selor at least every fortnight, in order to consult about the 
wants of the maiden-sisters of their district. 

Let them be also careful to assemble all the sisters of their 
district at the time appointed, inquiring into and providing 
for the need of each ; let them make a note of the necessities 
which present themselves and endeavor to meet them ; and 
if they cannot do so, let them expose them in the general 
congregation. 

Should any one of the sisters be guilty of disobedience, or 
misbehave in any other way, her lady-directress must impose 
on her some salutary penance, v/hich, being in conformity 
with the delinquent's disposition, may, with the help of God, 
bring about amendment. 

Above all things, let each lady-directress love all the 
maiden-sisters of her charge with that true charity which 
comes from the heart, and which is due to those who are the 
chosen brides and dear children of Christ Himself, endeavor- 



AND THE URSULINES, 319 

ing to take them all to her heart with a true motherly 
affection ; not looking down on them as persons beneath her 
own rank, but seeing in them God Himself, for whose sake 
she has undertaken to care for them. 

CHAPTER XIX. — OF THE MISTRESSES. 

Besides the directresses, it is necessary that there should be 
eight other persons — mistresses, as it were, who, under the 
direction of these ladies, shall deal more familiarly and 
frequently with the maiden-sisters of each district, comforting 
these assiduously with loving care, and, whenever there is 
need, correcting them with that charity and respect which 
the Spirit of Christ requires. Whenever they meet with 
that obstinacy and incorrigibleness which renders correction 
unavailing, they must lay the case before the lady-directress, 
relating what they have themselves done in the way of reproof, 
and then the directress will apply the proper remedy. 

As to the mistresses, their endeavor must be to manifest 
their great solicitude for the maiden-sisters of their charge, by 
taking pains to become acquainted with the natural disposi- 
tion of each one, her inclinations and habits. Let them 
observe how they behave both in the bosom of their families 
and outside of their homes ; and for that purpose let them 
pay the sisters frequent visits, and that unexpectedly. 

Let these mistresses be ordinarily chosen from the maiden 
class, and persons of such ripe judgment, exemplary life, and 
proved virtue, that they can be unhesitatingly intrusted with 
the formation and direction in spiritual life of so many 
servants of our Lord. They should be adorned with such 
shining virtues, that any lack of authority due to their youth 
might be compensated by the esteem and respect in which 
they are held by all. 



320 ST, ANGELA MERICI, 

These mistresses shall be elected and confirmed in the same 
manner as the lady-directresses ; and to each directress it will 
belong to designate the mistress who^ in her judgment, is the 
best fitted for her district : each mistress, in order to qualify 
herself for the efiicient discharge of her important functions, 
being careful to observe the following rules, to read them 
often, and then bear them easily in mind, when an opportunity 
occurs to apply them : 

The office of a mistress shall be — as the name itself in- 
dicates — to train the maiden-sisters placed under her care. 
The first means for so training these must be the mistress's 
own exemplary life, in which ought to be mirrored forth the 
life to be led by all the maiden-sisterhood of St. Ursula. 

She must often call around her these maiden-sisters, and 
exhort them with loving words dictated by true charity to be 
earnest in acquiring the spiritual perfection which is necessary 
to their calling, to use unhesitatingly all the means at their 
command, to avoid everything that might be an obstacle on 
the road to holiness, and to bend all their energies toward a 
most faithful observance of our rules. 

When the time appointed for a congregation (or general 
meeting of all the sisters) of each district, the mistress shall 
give them the following " Eeminders :'^ 

1. Let them be mindful to fulfill carefully and lovingly 
God's holy commandments and those of His Church, showing 
thereby openly the reverence and awe which they entertain 
toward the Divine Majesty. For — and they must not forget 
it — if it be incumbent on all true Christians *to observe both 
the law of God and that of His Church, how much more so 
are our sisters obliged thereunto ? 

2. In urging upon them the faithful observance of the 
Divine Law, we intend also to remind them more particularly 
of the precept enjoining reverence and obedience toward those 



AND THE URSULINES. 321 

whom they call '^Fathers" and ''Mothers/' both of the 
body and of the soul — and indeed toward all superiors. One 
who carefully remembers and diligently fulfills the latter 
precept of reverence and obedience toward parents and 
superiors, will be all the more likely to fulfill the former ; 
indeed, it will help toward fulfilling all the others. 

3. Inasmuch as it is most proper that one who professes to 
be the bride and servant of Christ should be the faithful 
imitator of all the virtues of the Divine Bridegroom ; and 
because among the manifold virtues which adorned His life, 
charity, humility, meekness, and gentleness shone forth with 
a special lustre ; therefore is it becoming that the mistresses 
should, in these general assemblies, specially impress upon 
their young charge the necessity of displaying in their home- 
life these same virtues of charity, patience, humility, and 
gentleness. 

4. They are to be reminded not to cultivate the acquaintance 
of all sorts of persons. Let them be familiar only with such 
as lead a pious life like themselves ; such persons only can by 
their intercourse contribute to the good name of our sisters 
as well as to their real happiness. As to worldly-minded and 
ill-famed women — they are to be shunned. The sisters must 
never converse with men without having a companion with 
them, and without a real neccessity. 

5. Those who make profession of the virginal life should 
ever bear with them the lighted lamp of good works, so as 
to shed the light of edification on all who see them. They 
should, therefore, have a care not to give cause of offence to 
others, as, for instance, one might easily do by being talka- 
tive, or by conversing about frivolous or worldly matters — 
and much more so by backbiting, or by giving ear to detrac- 
tion. It would be most unedifying to be seen running to the 



322 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

window, loitering beneath doorways and porticoes, or stand' 
ing still to gossip in the streets. 

6. Let the mistresses confirm those of their charge in their 
design of remaining maidens, or (for such as have made it") 
of keeping faithfully their yow of virginity. And let them 
impress upon the sisters that such virginity should be not 
merely that of the body, which once lost is lost forever ; but 
that of the soul, toward the preservation of which all the 
avenues of the senses should be most sacredly guarded. 

7. Let their dress be such as becomes their calling and the 
spiritual perfection which they professedly strive after, and 
in conformity with our Rule. As they are bound to wear 
a veil and cloak of non-transparent stuff, so they must avoid 
these habits of softness and fastidiousness, which constitute 
no slight danger for maidenly modesty, when they do not 
tend to ruin it inevitably. 

8. Let the sisters receive the sacraments at least once a 
month, and more frequently if it should be judged proper by 
the confessor of each. Let them assist punctually at sermons 
and Scripture-lessons ; and learn from them what may 
greatly help toward their own spiritual advancement. 

9. When no lawful impediment prevents them, let them 
endeavor to hear Mass every morning, making it their care to 
assist at this Divine Sacrifice with all interior devotion, while 
edifying by their exterior reverence all those- who are present. 

10. Let the mistresses recall to them the necessity of 
busying themselves, each with the approval of her confessor, 
in some pious work, and particularly in giving christia^^ 
EDUCATiO]^. Let the sisters be prompt and obedient to the 
voice of their superiors, and so demean themselves in their 
special good works, and particularly in teaching, that their 
pupils shall learn from them virtiious habits as well as the 
knowledge of their religion. 



AND THE URSULINES. 323 

11. Such of them as are compelled by poverty to leave 
their own homes and live with others, are to be told that 
they must not visit outside of their abode without the con- 
sent of their confessor and of their lady-directress. Nor 
must they change their place of residence without the knowl- 
edge and consent of the same. 

12. They are also to be told that, however praiseworthy a 
thing it be to make a long stay in the church, nevertheless, 
when, in the judgment of those who have care of their souls, 
they have spent in devotion the necessary time, they must go 
home. It is not becoming that our maiden-sisters should be 
overmuch abroad ; and prolonged absence must inconvenience 
their household. Let them be caref al to derive as much de- 
votion from their staying in the house as they are to edify by 
their modesty outside of it. 

13. It is also to be impressed on them that it is quite op- 
posed to the decencies of their calling to go forth frequently 
into the streets without any necessity. Wherefore, let them 
not be seen passing through the city, unless there be a neces- 
sity for doing so, or unless they are called by their respective 
counselors to the general or particular congregations, or to the 
solemn processions. To such all are to go when not kept at 
home by necessity. For such necessary absence a respectful 
and humble excuse is to be given. 

14. Although the fasts prescribed by the Eule do not 
oblige under pain of sin, nevertheless the sisters are to be 
exhorted to keep them so far as their strength will permit 
and with the advice of the confessor. 

15. They are also to be told that every one must have a 
fixed confessor, whom they may not change without permi^^ 
sion from the spiritual father of the Company, 

16. On the last Sunday of each month all are to go to the 
church of the Company, where the Rules shall be publicly 



324 8T, ANGELA MERICl 

read. The sisters are to lay these Kules to heart in order to 
observe them faithfully. In the same Church they are all to 
receive Holy Coiiimunion on the first Friday of the month, 
unless prevented by some lawful reason, in which case they 
are to excuse themselves with all humility. 

17. They must not go outside of the city without the per- 
mission of their lady-directress. 

18. The mistresses, besides all this, must take a great care 
of the novices, and see to it that these are instructed on 
all the various matters herein mentioned. They are to see 
the novices frequently for the purpose of becoming thor- 
oughly acquainted with them and with their way of living. 
Thus, when the time comes for admitting these beginners to 
the chapter or into the body of the company, the mistresses 
will be able to give to the ladies charg-ed with the govern- 
ment the full information required. 

CHAPTEK XX. — OF THE COUNSELORS. 

As the mistresses may be prevented by their occupations 
and sometimes even by their age from visiting as frequently as it 
would be needful the sister-maidens of their charge, it is nec- 
essary that there should be other ladies intrusted with this 
care. These shall have it as their duty to visit the sisters on 
the proper occasions, and to observe the proceedings of the 
latter, informing thereof the respective directresses and mis- 
tresses, so that these may the better govern and direct their 
subjects, or bring them back to the rule whenever they devi- 
ate from it. ■ 

These ladies shall be called Counselors, It will be also 
their duty to call the sisters of their district whenever their 
respective mistresses want to see them, or when the lady- 
directresses want to have them meet together, or, again. 



AND THE URSULINES. 325 

when the Mother Superior desires them to assemble in gen- 
eral or particular congregation pursuant to the ordinances. 

Their number is to be equal to that of the directresses and 
mistresses^ so that every district shall have its own counsel- 
or as it has directress and its mistress. To these the coun- 
selors must be subordinated as their ministers, helping them 
in the matters above-mentioned as well as in others, as occa- 
sion shall demand or obedience prescribe. They must be no 
less ripe in virtue than in years, well known for their blame- 
less conduct, and of about fifty years of age. They may be 
chosen from among the maiden -sisters or the matrons, from 
the former in preference, for this and all such offices, because 
of the higher dignity of the virginal state. 



CHAPTER XXI. — OF THE GElsTERAL COiq'GREGATIOI^ OP THE 
COMPANY OF ST. URSULA. 

The first thing which may be prudently stated regarding 
the general congregation, is that to it should be called all 
persons holding offices in the government thereof, together 
with all the maiden-sisters who have been admitted into the 
body of the Company, whether these have bound themselves 
by the vow of virginity or not. 

The general congregation must be convened when it is 
necessary to elect the Mother of the whole Company, or one 
of the assistants or one of the lady-directresses. 

To the Mother Superior or to the person holding her place, 
it shall belong to call this congregation and to compel the 
assistance of the electors. [The place of assembly shall be 
the Church of the Pieta bestowed on the Company ; but this 
is left to the judgment of the Mother and of the spiritual 
father of the Company.] 

Every one of the electors on entering the place appointed 



326 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

should make a brief prayer, recommending to God our Lord 
the business about to be transacted. This done she will take 
the place assigned to her either on account of the office she 
holds, or on that of her date of admission to the Company. 
And this same order is to be observed by all in giving their 
votes. 

The person whose oflBce it shall be to call the congrega- 
tion together shall also take care that, while those already 
assembled are waiting for the others, some pious book be 
read ; as well to shut out idleness and to fill up profitably the 
time of waiting, as to preclude all opportunity for talking, 
and other such inconveniences. 

Let all the electors be fully warned that they must not en- 
deavor directly or indirectly, by their own exertions or by 
others, to secure the election of this or that person, or the 
rejection of this or that person. But let them after recom- 
mending the matter to God, allow the Spirit of God to sug- 
gest His choice as it please th Him, and thus to cause that 
person to be elected who may best promote the Divine honor 
and the welfare of the Company. It is not thereby forbid- 
den to the electors that when they are questioned about the 
qualifications of certain persons, they may not answer truly ; 
but they are to guard against the danger of allowing their 
own affections to exaggerate unduly the virtues of one per- 
son or the imperfections of another. 

Let the person whose office it is to preside over the con- 
gregation see to it that the place of assembly be suitably pre- 
pared and furnished, so that all the electors may be seated 
according to their rank ; and let there be a table with a box 
or urn in which each elector can deposit her written vote. 

Let the spiritual father in the absence of the bishop, as 
soon as the congregation is opened, recite the prayer ap- 
pointed for such occasions. The same is to be done in clos- 



AND THE URSULINES, 327 

ing the meeting. Only, when some matter of extraordinary 
importance has to be decided by the congregation, it will 
be proper to recite the hymn " Yeni, Creator/' and at the 
end of the assembly in which the Mother is elected, the 
^' Te Deum laudamus'' with an appropriate prayer should 
be said. If the mother be not chosen, some other prayer will 
do. 

CHAPTER XXII. — OF THE GENERAL. COKGREGATIOK OF THE 
OFFICERS OF THE COMPANY. 

It is most seemly that the governing body should be well 
ordered, since on its being so depends good order throughout 
the entire Company. Now, to secure a well ordered and reg- 
ulated government, five things are to be considered here : 
the persons to be called to this congregation, the motives 
which have led to its being convened, the time and the place 
of meeting, and the forms to be observed in its sessions. 

1. The persons whom it is proper to call to this congrega- 
tion are : the Father and his substitute ; the Mother Su- 
perior and her four assistants, and the eight lady-direct- 
resses with their mistresses and counselors. Moreover, 
when temporal affairs are to be discussed, the protectors of 
the Company should also be admitted. The Father substi- 
tute can fill the functions of chancellor. 

2. The motives for calling this congregation shall be : to 
decide whether a general congregation should be convened ; 
the choice of some oflBcer whose election regards this con- 
gregation — as, for instance, the election of a counselor, or 
of a protector of the Company ; the admission of some of 
the maiden-sisters to the chapter or the body of the Com- 
pany, or the dismission of those guilty of misconduct or dis- 
obedience ; the decision of some matter advantageous to the 
Company ; and, finally, the necessity of meeting some local 



328 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

need pointed out by the lady-directresses, and which cannot 
be met in the district meetings. 

3. The proper time for assembling shall be : a few days 
before the time apj)ointed for admitting the maiden-sisters ; 
a few days before the time appointed for making the volun- 
tary Yow of yirginity ; the ninth week after the eight suc- 
cessive weekly district meetings held by the lady-directresses. 

4. [The place of assembly shall be the house of St. Ursala, 
which is] the house of the Company, and which the Mother 
will have prepared for the comfortable accommodation of the 
members. 

5. The form to be observed shall be : When -any one of the 
above motives presents itself for assembling the congregation, 
the Mother will consult with the spiritual father, fix with 
him the time and place of meeting, and give notice thereof 
to all the members of the Congregation. On entering the 
place of meeting, let each one pray for the success of the 
matter under deliberation, and then take her appointed 
place. The lady-directresses shall present a written state- 
ment of the needs of their respective districts to the Mother, 
who will hand them all over to the Spiritual Father. In 
order that no time be lost, the spiritual father will ask one 
of the members present to read out of some pious book, the 
others listening in silence. When one half of the officers 
called have arrived, the reading is stopped, and the congre- 
gation is opened in the following manner : 

The spiritual father or his substitute kneels down with all 
the members present and says the prayer appointed, which is 
also to be done at the close. The prayer ended, the spiritual 
father or the substitute, having determined the matters to 
treat of, and the order in which they are to be proposed, 
states them successively, each member being allowed to ex- 
press her opinion freely. The judgment of the majority is 



AND THE URSULINES, 329 

to be held as decisive on every matter so proposed. Daring 
these deliberations each member should remember two 
things : firsts to give her opinion standing, unless prevented 
by age or infirmity, and that she may not without permission 
speak twice on the same subject ; the second is, that when 
the majority have adopted a contrary decision, she must show 
neither temper nor displeasure, but acquiesce in the judgment 
of the majority. 

Let every decision arrived at by the congregation be en- 
tered on the book of records by the chancellor, in order to 
secure a better execution of the measures adopted. In the 
next meeting of the congregation the records will show 
whether the decisions have or not been carried out faithfully. 
Wherefore, at the beginning of each congregation, as soon as 
the opening prayer has been said, the minutes of the former 
assembly shall be read to ascertain how far the orders of the 
congregation have been executed, and what other remedy 
may be judged necessary in the premises. 

Each session is to be closed with prayer, and with the 
spiritual father's blessing. 



CHAPTER XXIII. — OF THE DISTRICT ASSEMBLIES OR C02q"GRE- 

GATIOIfS, 

What has been said about the general assemblies of the 
governing body, applies in a great measure to the order and 
proceeding to be observed in the district assemblies. The 
members composing each district congregation are the three 
superintendents of each, namely, the lady-directress, the mis- 
tress, and the counselor, together with all the maiden-sisters 
already admitted to the chapter or to membership, or pre- 
sented to the lady-directress for inscription in the district 
book, or in the list of the counselor. No other person is to 



330 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

be admitted except the Mother Superior and the spiritual 
father, who have a right to be present at all assemblies. 

The motives for calling these district assemblies may be 
manifold, as are the necessities which may arise. There are, 
however, three causes of more general occurrence : The first 
is to ascertain, how the rules of the Company are observed by 
all the members, as well as the ordinances of the particular 
congregations. The second, to draw attention to the ordi- - 
nances of the governing body, and to publish them officially. 
The third is to provide a remedy for the pressing bodily and 
spiritual needs of each district. 

The ordinary time of meeting shall be fixed by the Mother 
Superior and the spiritual father, and notified to each lady- 
directress. The extraordinary occasions shall be whenever 
the lady-directress finds it expedient to call a meeting in 
order to provide for some important need, or when some ur- 
gent necessity compels her to take such action ; in this case, 
the meeting must not be held without the previous consent 
of the Mother Superior and the Spiritual Father. 

As to the place of meeting, let it be chosen with a regard 
to the convenience of the sisters who live farthest off, to the 
quickness of the deliberations, and to remoteness from the 
busy haunts of men. The counselor must prepare every- 
thing in the place of meeting, seats for all, but special raised 
seats for the directress and mistress, and one a little lower for 
herself. The sisters will occupy three rows of benches in 
front of the directress : on the first row shall be seated the 
maiden-sisters admitted to membership; on the second, all 
those who have entrance into the chapter ; and on the third, 
the postulants. Some holy image shall also be conveniently 
placed, before which the sisters on entering can make a short 
prayer for the success of the deliberation. 

As to the manner of proceeding, this is to be observed : 



^JVD THE URSULmES. 331 

When the meeting has been resolved upon, the directress, 
mistress, and counselor should confer together, at least three 
days before the opening of the district congregation, about 
the needs of their district and the matters to be discussed at 
the session ; and this, in order that everything should be 
brought forward, and understood to better purpose, and that 
the needful measures should be decreed more understand- 
ingly. They must next determine the hour of meeting, con- 
sulting therefor the convenience of all the members, and ap- 
point as well the most favorable place. The counselor shall 
be instructed to inform the sisters of all this, bidding them 
all, in the name of the directress, to be present at the congre- 
gation. Each one, on coming into the hall, shall kneel to 
pray before the sacred image, and then, saluting the others in 
our Lord, take her appointed place. While they are coming 
in the mistress shall have a pious book read. When all are 
assembled, or, at least, one half of them, the list of names is 
read out, and the absences noted. This done, the opening 
prayer is recited, and the session begins in this way. First, 
the lady-governess explains why the congregation has been 
called ; next, she will ask of each sister how she has been 
since the last congregation, and how to her knowledge the 
rules and ordinances have been observed. Then she will beg 
the mistress to give an account of each of her subjects ; as 
to how the sisters have read and understood the rules and 
prescriptions given them, and all that pertains to the dis- 
charge of the mistress's office. The counselor shall be re- 
quired to state how far each one of the sisters has faithfully 
observed the rules and ordinances of the Company ; for the 
counselors are the guardians to whom the Company commits 
the keeping of the maiden- sisters of St. Ursula. Their duty 
is to punish by proportionate penances all carelessness and 
culpable neglect in keeping the rules, and all acts of disobe- 



332 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

dience toward the superiors, consulting in their corrections 
what is due to the edification of the other members. 

When any new decision of the congregation of goyern- 
ment is to be published in the district assembly, the lady- 
directress must have it so read and explained that all can 
understand it. She will ask of all present if they find any 
difficulty in executing this decision ; and should any one of 
them express unwillingness, the directress must take pains to 
remove it, advising the dissatisfied person to be satisfied, and 
leave all in the hands of the superiors. But should she remain 
obstinate in her opposition, a note is to be taken of her 
persistency, and the matter is to be referred to the congrega- 
tion of government for final action. 

Whenever it is necessary to make provision in the district 
assembly for the corporal or spiritual necessities of the maid- 
ens, this must be done with all the tact and charity possible. 
Especially is this indispensable when we have to meet the 
spiritual needs of any sister ; we must have regard to the 
natural disposition and social rank, and be careful not to 
embitter her by sharp reproofs, which only drive the guilty 
to despair and to the commission of more grievous faults. 
On the other hand, it would not do to correct gently those 
who bear themselves insolently and contemn the ordinances 
and rules of the Company. It must also be remembered, 
that certain faults committed publicly should be visited with 
public reprehension, as well for the good example due to 
others, as for the benefit of the offenders themselves. Others, 
on the contrary, demand to be secretly corrected, for this 
will benefit them most. In one word, some are improved by 
public reprehension, while others are greatly helped by se- 
cret reproof. The superiors must derive from the light of 
the Holy Spirit and from true and heartfelt charity the wis- 
dom necesaryto procure in these difficulties the advancement 



AND THE URSULINES. 333 

of the divine honor and the salvation of the maidens com- 
mitted to them. 

After this, the lady-directress shall recommend to all the 
faithful execution of the rules and ordinances, and shall en- 
deavor to make them all apply themselves to teaching the 
Christian doctrine, in which pious occupation all should have 
greatly at heart to reap abundant fruits. Then, after offering 
prayer once more, the directress bids them separate in God's 
name. 

On the day after, the tliree superintendents shall go to re- 
port the proceedings to the spiritual father and the Mother 
Superior. 

CHAPTER XXIY. — OF THE PROTECTORS OF. THE COMPACT IK 
THINGS TEMPORAL. 

ExPERiEi^CE has proyed that many pressing straits may arise 
in the Company relating to temporal matters, to which 
women are powerless to find an issue. This makes it neces- 
sary to choose three men, who shall be ever ready to assist 
us in our needs, when their aid is required either by the 
whole Company or by some of its members. 

The Mother and the ladies who are charged with the goy- 
ernment of the Company can propose to the bishop the 
names of such as they deem most able and willing to bestow 
the needed help. The choice must be approyed and con- 
firmed by him. He may also change these protectors when 
he knows this to be conduciye to the greater good of the 
Company. 

CHAPTER XXy. — OF THE URSULII^ES THROUGHOUT THE DIO- 
CESE OF BRESCIA. 

'' God is not a respecter of persons," ^ but bestows His 
grace on all with open-handed liberality, illuminating their 

1 Acts X. : 34. 



334: ST. ANGELA MERICI 

minds with the light of His Holy Spirit, in order that they 
may see and use the means necessary to the salvation and 
conduciye to the perfection of their souls. There are many 
persons who are illustrious in the sight of their fellow-men, 
who are poor and mean in His eyes ; others, on the contrary, 
who are of little or no account in the eyes of men, are great 
and glorious in the sight of the Divine Groodness. It is not 
to be wondered at, if He hath inspired with the desire of 
serving Him in this holy Company of ours many devout per- 
sons beyond the walls of Brescia, and living in the hamlets 
and domains belonging to this diocese. Surely, such persons 
must not be frustrated in their pious purpose. They shall 
have admittance among the members of this CoTupany, and 
shall be made sharers in the good works and merits proper 
to it. 

These sisters shall be as much under the fatherly and pas- 
toral care of the bishop as those within the city ; and they 
shall acknowledge and reverence as their father and su- 
perior the priest looked up to by the entire Company as its 
Father, and given to it by the bishop as his own vicar. 

Although it is necessary that the sisterhood throughout 
the country places should have officers and superiors like the 
city sisters, nevertheless it seems best for the welfare and 
unity of the whole body that the officers of the country sister- 
hood should be subordinated to those of the city, and that 
no decree or ordinance shall be made by the former, confin- 
ing themselves to execute and enforce only such ordinances 
as shall proceed from the persons forming the government 
within the city. 

They shall acknowledge the Mother of the whole Company 
as theirs also, and her assistants and the lady-directresses as 
their superiors, endeavoring in all things to show them rev- 



AND THE VBSULINES, 



335 



erence and obedience by executing their ordinances, admoni- 
tions, and commands. 

As they are to be occasionally yisited every year by the 
Father in the discharge of his office, or by the Father sub- 
stitute, when the former is lawfully prevented from visiting 
them, they must pay him all due respect and obedience, as 
to their acknowledged superior and the vicar placed by the 
bishop over the entire Company. 

[They may not choose at will their own confessor ; but 
must confess themselves to him alone who has been selected 
for them by the Father or his substitute, and that in order 
to secure among us all greater uniformity and oneness of 
spirit in the service of the Divine Majesty.] 

All the superiors, namely, the substitute, lady-directresses, 
mistresses, and counselors, or at least some one of their num- 
ber, shall be obliged once a year, on the feast of Pentecost, 
to come to Brescia, and present themselves to the spiritual 
father and the Mother Superior ; and that, both because by 
so coming they strengthen the union which should exist be- 
tween the city sisters and their own subjects, and because this 
visit enables them to give an account to their superiors of the 
sisters committed to their care, to expose the wants of the 
latter, and to return strengthened by the advice and the need- 
ful aid of the former. It is not hereby intended to make this 
journey obligatory to such as live at a great distance or who 
could not come to the city without great inconvenience to 
themselves. The circumstances are left to the judgment of 
their spiritual father, who may dispense them from the obli- 
gation of this annual visit, while providing in some other 
way to make them fulfill the object of this injunction. 

Let every one of these substitute superiors use all the op- 
portunities in her power to have recourse to the city superiors 
when the needs of her subjects require it. For the city 



336 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

superiors, having more experience and practice in such mat- 
ters, will be better able to extend to them the required aid. 

Let them know that all the rules, customs and ceremonies 
in use among the superiors and members of the city sister- 
hood should be, as far as possible, observed by the sisterhood 
outside of Brescia. 

The substitute directresses and the spiritual fathers duly 
appointed for the sisterhood outside the walls, must know 
that they cannot, without permission, accept or admit into 
the Company any postulant. 

In electing their officers the sisterhood outside of Brescia 
must observe the form prescribed above for the Company in- 
side the city ; such officers are not to be elected without the 
knowledge and permission of the Father of the Company.'^ 

From beside the shrine of St. Angela and this monumental 
work in which her spirit still lives, we can now glance rap- 
idly at the wonderful spectacle presented by the history of 
the Order which she founded. It can only be a rapid sur- 
vey, however, enabling the reader to grasp, in the marvel- 
ous destini^ of the Ursulines, the purpose of the obscure, 
penitential, and laborious life we have been sketching so far. 



PART II, 



THE UESULII^ES. 
CHAPTER XX. 

THEIR VARIED FORTUNES IN ITALY — PRIMITIVE CONGREGA- 
TION OF BRESCIA — HOW THEY FARED IN MILAN — URSU- 
LINES OF VENICE, PARMA, PIACENZA, FOLIGNO, AND ROME. 

As we have already seen, the Institute of St. Angela was 
not approved by the Holy See till 1545, whereas she died in 
January, 1540. Meanwhile, the Company she had founded 
was, and that almost immediately after Angela's death, as- 
sailed by more than one fierce storm. True, the Company 
grew and spread in spite of the fury of the blast ; but it is 
none the less true that its violence was such as to threaten 
the Ursulines with total destruction. 

One formidable, objection, which prevailed at a later pe- 
riod, was urged against the uncloistered condition of the sis- 
terhood. But this was discussed and pressed by outsiders, 
principally by canonists and members of the existing re- 
ligious Orders ; within the Company itself it found no favor, 
and was, therefore, comparatively harmless, for the moment 
at least. The other objection, though based on a matter of 
mere secondary importance, was well-nigh fatal to the young 
sisterhood, because it found many advocates and abettors 

337 



338 ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

among themselyes. This objection regarded the question as 
to whether or not the Ursiilines should all wear one form of 
religious habit. The holy foundress had merely prescribed 
the wearing of a sober and modest dress which should suffi- 
ciently distinguish the members of the Company and render 
them easily recognizable to each other and to the people in 
whose behalf they labored. As they were destined to live in 
the bosom of their own families, she did not care to attract 
to their persons or their attire more attention than was need- 
ful for the great purpose they had in yiew. 

At any rate, scarcely had her remains been laid to rest in 
the crypt of St. Afra's, when some fault-finding lay friends, 
abetted by some clergymen, began to press on the Countess 
Lodrone and her assistants the propriety of wearing a uni- 
form — a dress of black with a white kerchief, and a chord 
similar to that worn by the Tertiaries of St. Francis. The 
Augustinian Fathers, in particular, urged the use of a chord or 
cincture. From the Countess and four of her assistants this 
proposition or suggestion met with favor. But the other 
four assistants, together with the Countess Luzzago, opposed 
a most determined resistance to this innovation, and were 
ably supported by Gabriel Cozzano, who drew up an eloquent 
memoir against the proposed change. 

Nevertheless, on December 11th, 1545, a decree was issued 
by the Superior- General enjoining on all the members to wear 
a cincture, as a badge of their unworldly vocation. The 
Countess Luzzago and her followers were excluded from the 
Company ; but the Vicar-Ganeral, Ferretti, to whom they 
appealed, decided in their favor and against the innovation. 

Meanwhile, the bull of approbation of Paul III. was pub- 
lished in Brescia ; and soon afterward, in answer to a petition 
from the Countess Lodrone, the Pope sent a brief granting 
an indulgence to all religious women who dressed in black 



AND THE URSV LINES, 339 

and wore the Augustinian leathern girdle. This contained 
no injunction to the Countess Lodrone and the other oppo- 
nents ; and the question was only settled in 1546 by a papal 
commission. It decreed the wearing of a black flowing robe, 
with the black cincture of leather as worn by the Augus- 
tinian nuns. 

These bickerings were most unfortunate, and were the very 
thing against which the dying foundress had warned her 
family in her pathetic adjurations in favor of charity and har- 
mony of thought and feeling, 

No sooner had the bull of approbation been published, 
than Desenzano and Salo petitioned the Mother-General for 
colonies of Ursulines. It was but natural that Angela Me- 
rici's birthplace, as well as the dear home of her mother, 
should be first among the localities privileged to possess houses 
of the Order. That of Salo has long ago ceased to exist 
— probably since the first French invasion. The community 
of Desenzano seems to have shared the fate of the Ursulines 
of Brescia, remaining faithful to the primitive rule and bless- 
ing the thrifty little town by its manifold holy influences 
and pious labors, till suppressed by Bonaparte. 

We shall listen to what their successors write from " De- 
senzano-on-the-Lake,^^ February 8th, 1877 : 

" Dearest mothers and sisters, ^^ they write to all the 
houses of the Order, " we invite you to rest a few moments 
by our side beneath the lovely sky of Italy — of that Italy so 
dear to every Ursuline. You will find here but a poor and 
lowly offshoot of the great family founded by St. Angela. 
Our monastery dates from 1841. It began very modestly, 
three choir sisters and one lay sister forming the new com- 
munity under the guidance of a venerable Ursuline, who had 
been one of the victims of the revolutionary suppression. At the 
present date we reckon twenty- two members in our house. . . . 



340 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

We all work hard from morning till night ; and this is our 
sole happiness, together with the charity which binds us to 
each other. The house itself is anything but spacious. Still, 
we are proud and happy to live in it. Is not the soil around 
us impregnated with the sweat of our first Mother ? Is not 
the air we breathe all fragrant with the perfume of her vir- 
tues ? "We have a well-kept orchard, divided by a large alley, 
and in this we take our accustomed exercise. We regret that 
our boarding-school cannot be separated from the dwelling 
of the community. We are also without spring-water, bath- 
ing-place, or infirmary. At this very moment one of our 
boarders is sick, and we have to give up to her the school- 
room of our youngest pupils, while they have to be taught 
in one of our own cells. And of these the number is so lim- 
ited, that four nuns have to occupy the same room. Never- 
theless, albeit we may glory in our poverty, we are still the 
spoiled children of Providence. For, although we have no 
infirmary, as we were just saying, we should also add that 
during the last six years we have not known sickness. Our 
last death was in 1870.'' 

The yearly pension paid this poor community while under 
the Austrian Government ceased as soon as they passed be- 
neath the rule of the Piedmontese. They were allowed, how- 
ever, to retain possession of their little monastery ; but were 
compelled to send their sisters all the way to Turin to be ex- 
amined and certificated as teachers ! 

We now return to Brescia. 

It was well that the Company of St. Ursula was severely 
tried in its native spot, and cordially approved by all who 
beheld its members at their divine work in the schools they 
had founded, in the hospitals where their helpful charity and 
angelic modesty shone like sunbeams, and in the families 
which boasted the presence and possession of maidens so de- 



AND THE URSULINES. 341 

voted, so heroic, so powerful for good. The peculiar features 
of their religious life, and their devotion to training the 
young especially, challenged attentive observation and elicited 
not a little unjust criticism during the first twenty-fi^e years 
after the death of the foundress. But the closer, the more 
thorough, and the more conscientious the observation of men, 
even the most prejudiced, the more enthusiastic and unani- 
mous was the praise called forth by virtues and services be- 
yond all praise. 

Angela had not been anxious to see her sisterhood extend 
itself beyond the walls of Brescia, and particularly beyond 
the limits of the diocese bearing that name, during her own 
lifetime. Her chief solicitude aimed at so moulding her 
daughters to an exalted esteem for their own calling, to a 
generous devotion to its duties, and the fervent practice of 
the great fundamental virtues of the virginal life, that they 
should remain immovably faithful in the divine service, 
whether in the noise and bustle of the most public place and 
occupation, or in the privacy and seclusion of their homes. 

Meanwhile the neighboring cities and dioceses were de- 
sirous to share in the precious fruits produced in Brescia and 
its territory by the new sisterhood. 

One of St. Jerome Emiliani's early disciples, a Brescian 
called John Scotti, was the first to obtain a colony of Ursu- 
lines. He, encouraged by the Bishop of Cremona, Nicolas 
Sfondrati, aftelrward Pope Gregory XIV., brought with him 
in triumph to the city so dear to Angela a few of her 
daughters ; and Cremona soon rejoiced in seeing this first 
offshoot of the goodly tree take root in its soil and grow up 
and bear most sweet and salutary fruit. This happened in 
the year 1565.^ 

But Milan, where St. Angela's name was scarcely less pop- 

1 Salvatori, pp. 59, 60. 



342 JST. ANGELA MEKICl, 

ular than in Cremona, liad also been impatiently waiting for 
a colony of Ursulines. The capital of Lombardy was at that 
time blessed in the possession of a prelate held by all Chris- 
tendom to be, in modern ages, the model of all those who 
have charge of souls— St. Charles Borromeo. Man of God 
as he was before and above all things, he had a keen in- 
stinctiye sense of the spiritual needs of the popular masses ; 
and no sooner had he heard of the new sisterhood established 
in Brescia, than he felt that they were destined of God to 
preserve the rising generation from vice and error, to instruct 
the children in all religious knowledge and saintly deeds, 
while winning the souls of the parents to God and the love 
of all good, by the silent persuasion of their own pure and 
devoted lives. 

Twelve Brescian Ursulines came to Milan in 1566, and in 
pursuance of the plan formed by the archbishop, they were 
lodged in a spacious dwelling, where they might open schools 
for their pupils, and attend to their usual avocations. The 
sisters began immediately to visit the different wards of the 
great city, seeking out the children and taking every means 
to teach them all that was suited to their age and condition. 
Besides, a no less zeal was displayed in drawing to themselves 
young girls, whom they instructed and formed to all the 
duties of Christian life as well as to the higher virtues of 
evangelical perfection. To older women, to wives and 
mothers, indeed to all the adult persons of their own sex, they 
held out an invitation to meet weekly in the community 
house and hear lectures on religious and spiritual topics most 
interesting and useful to all. Thus while the little colony 
continued to live together in the dwelling bestowed on them 
by the generous archbishop, they permitted the new mem- 
bers recruited from all classes of the Milanese population, to 
live in the bosom of their own families, precisely as did their 



AND THE UESULINES, 343 

Brescian sisters. On certain days all met together in the 
'^ House of St. Ursula/' where they were instructed and 
comforted by their local superior, and where the saintly 
archbishop himself would often come to address them and 
to pour into their souls the spirit of heroic generosity and 
self-sacrifice which filled his own to overflowing. 

How could the daughters of St. Angela, living so near 
him, hearing every day and hour the praise of his saintly 
deeds and Christ-like goodness, and blessed, moreover, with 
the special care bestowed on themselves, not look up to such 
a man and such a bishop, as to the living oracle of the Di- 
vine Master ? So when, in his addresses to them about re- 
ligious perfection and the beauty of holiness, he came to ex- 
press his wish to see them live together in homes which, 
would give them the joys and helps of family and community 
life, their hearts were won to yield a ready assent. When, 
next, he exhorted them not to be satisfied with a simple de- 
termination, though never so firm, of living a life of poverty, 
chastity, and obedience, but to bind themselves irrevocably to 
their Lord and Love by religious vows of the same intent, 
and uttered publicly in the chapel attached to their resi- 
dence — they were carried away by the eloquence of one whose 
tongue seemed touched with a seraph's fire, and whose whole 
life was the most admirable embodiment of voluntary pov- 
erty and self -crucifixion, of angelic purity, and strict obe- 
dience to the law of God and the Church. Who that looked 
upon that face which ever glowed with unearthly light could 
refuse to follow such a guide up the steepest paths of self- 
denial and immolation ? St. Charles, at the very moment he 
proposed this change, had much to suffer from more than 
one community of nuns in his episcopal city who would not 
be led by him to return to the pristine fervor of their Order ; 
he was therefore all the more anxious to make of the daughters 



344 ST, ANGELA MEUIGL 

of Angela Merici, apostles of education as they were, models 
of strict religions observance, to whom all might look np for 
edifying example. So, in 1572, at the solicitation of the Arch- 
bishop of Milan, Pope Gregory XIII. issued a bull, which, 
after approving and confirming anew the Institute of Angela 
Merici, authorized the Ursulines to form congregations, to 
live in communities, and to adopt this modified form every- 
where. They are thus known in history as the ^' Congregated 
Ursulines, ^^ very difEerent from the Cloistered Ursulines. 
Until then the Ursulines of Milan had taught school outside 
of their own house in various parts of the city. It now be- 
came an object of the archbishop's care to have them teach 
only within their residence ; and, to secure the benefit of 
their teaching to the different wards of his city, he resolved 
to establish therein separate Ursuline communities. 

Thus this first change — so momentous for the Company — 
was brouglit about gently, silently, irresistibly, like the growth 
and maturing of the harvest through the summer months and 
by the gentle but mighty agencies of nature. The Cardinal- 
Archbishop gave a great degree of solemnity to the inaugura- 
tion of this new form of community life, as well as to the 
emission of the substantial monastic vows by the sisterhood, 
St. Angela, from her place of glory near God's throne, could 
not but contemplate with pleasure this phase in the life of 
her Company, which foreboded so wonderful an extension to 
its members, and so incalculable an amount of good to the 
Christian world. 

St. Charles fervently recommended, in 1576, the establish- 
ment of these ^^congregated" Ursuline communities to the 
bishops of Lombardy assembled in provincial council. The 
splendid heroism displayed by the sisters during the great 
plague of that year served as a powerful confirmation to the 
eulogy bestowed on their fervor and efficiency. It contributed 



AND THE URSULINES. 345 

also to increase their reputation tlirougliout Upper Italy, 
particularly through the Venetian territory, which claimed 
their glory as its own. So we are prepared to find that 
Venice, which had retained so precious a recollection of 
Angela Merici's* merit, was among the first cities of Italy to 
solicit a colony of Ursulines. It is uncertain in what year 
they were inyited to Venice. In 1557, however, the name of 
the noble patrician widow lady, Donata Falier, is mentioned 
in connection with the establishment there. She was a woman 
of extraordinary merit, and may have been the foundress of 
the Venetian Ursulines. Nor are we informed whether these 
began, or not like those of Milan. Probably the example of 
St. Charles had some influence in giying to their manner of 
life the form in which w-e find it at a later period. Certain 
it is that the Ursuline monastery in the city of St. Lawrence 
Justiniani assumed at an early date the exclusive restrictions 
implied by their title of Noble Nuns — a title which they also 
bore in the cities of Parma and Foligno. They were also 
titled canonesses, and wore a white dress with a black veil. 
They expressly claimed to belong to the religious family of 
Brescia. Their school, from its very foundation, held and 
maintained a foremost rank in Venice. Indeed, it would 
appear that the purpose of its founders was so to bring up the 
daughters of the nobility in all goodly knowledge and solid 
virtue, that from them and through them the benefits of 
Christian education and example might extend downward to 
the laboring population. The Ursulines always endeavored, 
by every means within their power, to make their noble and 
wealthy pupils the apostles of the poor. 

Genoa, on the opposite shore of the peninsula, was not 
behindhand with its ancient rival, Venice. 

The spirit of St. Catherine of Genoa seems to have long 
survived in her native city, producing women remarkable 



346 ST. ANGELA MEllICL 

alike for their holy life and intellectual superiority. One of 
these^ Mother Venarcia, who established and governed the 
first society of Ursulines in Genoa, was so distinguished for 
heroic virtue, that the senate and magistrates petitioned the 
Holy See, after her death, to have her cause introduced for 
beatification. She^ like St. Angela, had not been brought 
up in the schools ; still she taught herself so well, that she left 
behind her four volumes on spiritual life. It is most likely 
that the example of St. Charles in Milan encouraged the 
friends of popular and religious education in Genoa to 
introduce and favor the Institute of St. Angela. The first 
Ursuline establishment there dates from 1573. Mother 
Venarcia governed it during sixty years. 

From Milan, Cremona,, and Genoa the sweet odor of the 
Company of St. Ursula, which St. Charles Borromeo called 
*'the Tree of Life,'' in recommending the love of it to its 
members, spread southward to Central Italy. In 1595 
Eanuccio Farnese I., Duke of Parma, called the Ursulines to 
educate the daughters of the nobility in his states. 

It was, however, but a onesided view of the education 
needed by his country and age. The Ursulines might have 
done for Parma what they were even then doing for Milan 
and Brescia, and what they were preparing to do so effectually 
in France — they might have educated and elevated the chil- 
dren of the people, while bestowing especial care on the 
daughters of the highest families. 

So Eanuccio I. was content to create a house of Ursulines 
in Parma, in which forty, and only forty, noble maidens could 
embrace the Institute of St. Angela, and devote themselves 
to education. The duke took it on himself to legislate for 
this establishment, modifying according to his caprice the 
rule of the holy foundress, forbidding the Ursulines to 
acknowledge any other protectors than himself and his sue- 



AND THE URSULINES. 347 

cessors, removing them in things spiritual from the jurisdic- 
tion of the bishop and placing them under the direction of the 
Jesuits, prescribing to them the very form and color of their 
religious costume — a white tunic and veil with a long flowing 
mantle of blue. It was as if one should take a shoot from 
the sacred fig-tree of India, and plant it in a hothouse, 
carefully lopping off every one of the air-roots by which this 
glory of Indian vegetation ever seeks to extend itself over the 
adjacent soil and bless the earth around with its grateful 
shade and wholesome fruit ! 

The good nuns were so edifying and so useful, nevertheless, 
that Piacenza wished to have a monastery of the same kind, 
and two members of the sisterhood were sent to be the 
directresses of this new establishment. The benefits result- 
ing to both Parma and Piacenza from institutions aiming 
principally at female education, were so great, in spite of the 
unwise restrictions of their founders, that the fame of the 
Ursulines extended into Umbria. A maiden lady, known as 
Paula of Foligno, from her native city, became with Cardinal 
Baronius instrumental in creating a most flourishing establish- 
ment at Foligno in 1599. The same fundamental limitations 
unfortunately prevailed there too. A few of the sisters — all 
of whom were noble — lived with Paula in community ; the 
others continued to make their homes with their parents. 

The Ursulines of Eome itself date from the same period. 
There were two distinct congregations of them, the first of which 
was composed of uncloistered sisters, like those of Brescia. 
Strange to say, the foundresses were both noble young French 
women, who had, like Angela Merici in 1525, been brought 
separately and providentially to Eome, the one on her way to 
Jerusalem, the other for the Jubilee of 1600. One, Frances 
de Montjoux, arrived there in March, 1598, and was induced 
by Clement VIIL to fix her abode there, instead of going to 



348 • ST. ANGELA MERICI, 

Palestine. The other, Frances de Gourcy, was a kindred 
spirit ; and both were drawn to each other by that mighty 
spiritual attraction begotten of sanctity. They liad both 
heard of the immense good done by the Ursulines in Upper 
Italy, and resolved to become themselves daughters of St. 
Angela. They purchased a house, and, with the approbation 
of the reigning Pope, opened classes. Other generous souls 
like their own were not slow to unite with them, and their 
community, as well as the numbers of their pupils, grew 
apace. 

They had begun to teach in 1600, calling themselves 
Ursulines, and following the Kule of St. Angela. A few years 
later the Church of St. Kufina and St. Secunda was given to 
them by Paul V. (1605-21), and this first Congregation of 
Eoman Ursulines, called, after their church, ^' the Congrega- 
tion of St. Eufina and St. Secunda," has subsisted down to 
our own times. 

The other congregation, of cloistered Ursulines, dates 
from 1684, and Was an offshoot of the Belgian congregation, 
itself a prolific branch of that of Bordeaux. The Duchess of 
Modena, Laura Martinozzi, a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and 
her daughter, Mary of Modena, Queen to James II. of 
England, were the instruments by which this second establish- 
ment was brought about. The Duchess of Modena during 
her stay in the Low Countries had many opportunities of 
admiring the saintly fervor and practical wisdom of the 
Ursulines of Mons and Brussels. Indeed, the Ursuline 
monastery of that capital was a creation of the mother house 
of Mons. She studied the sisters in their home life, their 
schools, their constitutions ; she gathered the most reliable 
information about their labors in the other cities of Flanders, 
and resolved, on her return to Eome, to found in the capital 
of the Christian world a monastery governed by the same 



AND THE URSULUSfES, 349 

rules and directed by some of the admirable women who were 
such a blessing to the Flemish populations. 

Her petition to Innocent XI. was sustained by Cardinal 
Howard, the English ambassador in Eome. The Pope took 
a warm personal interest in the matter^ convinced himself 
that the proposed constitutions were those approved for 
Bordeaux in 1618 by Paul V., and on March 24th, 1684, he 
issued the bull instituting the Eoman establishment. 

^o sooner was this communicated to the Duchess of Modena 
at Brussels, than she set out for Eome with six professed nuns, 
during the month of September, arriving in Eome on the 
12th of November. On their arrival they were all hospitably 
received in the convent of St. Catherine of Sienna at Monte- 
Magnanapoli, where they remained perforce till the 13th of 
May following, when they moved to hired lodgings, and 
opened a school. The delay was inevitable. The journey 
from Brussels had cost the Duchess of Modena her life, and 
the Ursulines were solely dependent on her bounty for their 
present subsistence and future prospects. Her sudden death 
left them unprovided for in the midst of the great city ; 
and, like all people who come to do in any place what others 
should or could have done, the little colony of Flemish nuns 
met with but scanty synipathy and little or no support from 
the Eomans on their first arrival. Their generous bene- 
factress had put in their hands a sum of 7000 Eoman crowns 
($7000), but this would barely suffice to procure them suitable 
accommodation for the present, leaving them totally un- 
provided for in the future. Such was one of the chief 
grounds of opposition that their establishment met with at 
the beginning. They began courageously, nevertheless, 
drawing from their poverty and the efforts made to prevent 
their obtaining a foothold in Eome the assurance that their 
work was God's work, and that He would not forsake them. 



350 ST. ANGELA MERICl, 

They were not disappointed. After considerable delays, 
the testamentary dispositjons of the Duchess of Modena be- 
came known ; and one of them was a legacy of 15,000 crowns 
to her dear Ursulines. Besides this, the dying princess had so 
warmly recommended them to the Queen of England, that 
the latter added a considerable sum to her mother's provision. 
Timely as was this liberality, it had come too late for a portion 
of the little Ursuline colony. Three of them had. returned to 
Brussels. 

The three remaining nuns, however, lost no time in securing 
a more commodious habitation in the Via Vittoria, beneath 
the shadow of the Pincian Hill ; and in this house, annexed 
to, which was a little chapel, they settled down to hard w^ork 
on April 27th, 1688. The ceremony of the canonical 
inauguration of this first monastery of cloistered Ursulines in 
Eome took place four days afterward, on the 1st of May, the 
great Innocent XI. conGrming by a new brief the bull issued 
for their establishment in 1684, and permitting the Ursulines 
of Brussels and Mons to send auxiliaries to their Roman sis- 
ters. This they did without delay. 

But during the long four years of trial, opposition, and 
painful suspense which the three Ursulines who remained in 
Rome had to endure after the death of the Duchess of 
Modena, they did not allow any discouragement to interrupt 
for a moment their labor of teaching, or to damp the ardor 
with which they gave themselves up to their pupils. They 
had their boarding-school for the daughters of the nobility, 
as well as their free day-schools for the children of the people. 
To both of these they gave great developments after their 
installation in the Via Vittoria, They needed now no other 
recommendation to families of all classes ; for all had learned 
to revere and bless and love them. " They may be held up 
as a model to all the monasteries of Rome !'' exclaimed 



AND THE UR8ULINE8, 351 

Clement XI. (1700-21). ISTor did their light grow dim as the 
eighteenth century held on its course, destroying faith in 
men's souls, making of scepticism implanted in the minds of 
each rising generation the fatal germ of the intellectual, 
moral, and social convulsions which are now running their 
course as fatally as the avalanche let loose from Alpine 
summits upon the doomed hamlets of the adjacent valleys. 

The revolutionary armies of Kapoleon Bonaparte found the 
Ursulines of Eome in 1796 so dear to the Eoman people, that 
they dared not molest them in their holy avocations. Xor 
in 1809, when Napoleon's unholy policy suppressed all the 
monasteries of the capital of Christendom, did the sacrilegious 
invader drive the Ursulines from their schools and their home. 
He was satisfied with abolishing the cloister, behind which the 
educators of Roman womanhood concealed the austerity and 
simplicity of their private life. The despot had hoped that 
these devoted women would at once return to the enjoyment 
of the worldly honors a ad pleasures which they had freely 
renounced. The world, however, only saw with admiration 
that the uncloistered daughters of St. Angela clung more 
lovingly than ever to their desecrated home, their class-rooms, 
and their over-rich poverty. Not one Ursuline forsook her 
post. 

The fatal seeds of error and systematic moral corruption 
which the First Napoleon, his armeis, and nis officials 
scattered broadcast over Eome and all Italy, from 1796 to 
1815, were cultivated with too intelligent and persevering a 
husbandry not to cast deep roots in the soil after the ex- 
pulsion of the French. Italian revolutionists had learned too 
many good lessons from French Jacobinism, and had too 
much intellect of their own not to improve on their master's 
methods. When God's inscrutable providence permitted 
another Bonaparte to exercise over Eome his baneful pro- 



352 ST, ANGELA MERIGl 

tectorate, and over Italy the influence of his reyolutionary 
sympathies, the Italian mind was ready to discard all teach- 
ing that spoke of religion, and to destroy all teachers who 
would make the youth of Italy look with love or reverence on 
the religious glories of their fatherland. 

One of the first acts of the Piedmontese masters of Rome 
was, on January 1st, 1871, to abolish the yearly rent of one 
thousand crowns granted to the devoted Ursulines in favor of 
their schools by Benedict XIA^ On the 5th of April follow- 
ing the good nuns were compelled to yield to the new Roman 
municipality all the classes of their day-scholars, which were 
thus handed over to the teaching of the Garibaldian evan- 
gelists. It was in vain that the nuns tried, by opening classes 
for their day-scholars in a portion of the boarding-school, to 
afford a portion of their attached pupils an opportunity of 
continuing their education. Within a few weeks these classes 
were forcibly given up to the municipal officers. Even the 
portion of the monastery occupied as a novitiate had to be 
surrendered to men who would be satisfied by nothing less 
than by starving and crowding out the poor defenceless nuns 
into the street. 

Then they were informed that, in order to be authorized to 
teach, they must adopt in every point the programme and 
method prescribed by the government, and pass an examina- 
tion before receiving a diploma of capacity. To all this, in 
the hope of being allowed to break never so little of the 
bread of life to the children of Rome, the Ursulines submitted 
with heroic fortitude. The government, however, merely 
wished to weary their patience and force them to leave the 
monastery altogether. In K"ovember the monastery itself 
was declared government property, and a miserable pension 
or pittance was assigned to each member of the community. 
. . . And to fill their cup of bitterness to overflowing, they 



AN'D THE URSULmES, 353 

were commanded to hold themselves in readiness to leave the 
monastery at any moment. The courageous superior mean- 
while appealed to the civil courts, and, wonderful to relate, 
the courts decided in favor of the Ursulines ! This judg- 
ment was given on September 29th, 1874. 

The Italian Government, nevertheless, only half obeyed 
the decision of the law courts. The nuns were peremptorily 
commanded to give up one half of their monastery and 
garden to an Orpheonic society favored by the authorities. 
On the 31st day of May, 1876, the commissioners and work- 
men came to make the necessary changes, or rather to create 
as much disorder as possible in the house — for they knew, as 
all Romans know, that the 31st of Miiy was, in Italy, the 
solemn Feast of St. Angela ! They were shamed into a little 
delay, however, and consented to wait till the next day. 

Do we wonder that the venerable sujDerior, Mary-Margaret 
Eutizi, sank beneath this last cruel act of antichristian 
and cowardly oppression, after having battled heroically, 
though an octogenarian, with the unfeeling spoiler for more 
than five years. 

And so the poor Ursulines of Eome, compelled to teach 
school in the narrow cells allotted to their sadly diminished 
number, still continue the work of God. The tale they 
could unfold is only one — and that far from being the most 
heart-rending — among thousands upon thousands through- 
out the length and breadth of the once Catholic Italy. 

There are a few other Ursuline schools scattered through 
the Peninsula which endeavor to maintain a precarious 
existence in spite of the determined hostility of the govern- 
ment : at Calvi and Stroncone, in the diocese of Terni ; at 
Sesto-Calende, Cannobio, Galliate, Omegna, Miasino, and 
Saluzzo in Piedmont and Lombardy; at Benevento in Southern 
Italy, and in other places, where the Catholic populations 



354: ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

still foster and protect, as best they may, the loved teachers 
of their children, till it please an overruling Providence to 
give resfc to the land from the earthquake and the storm. 

The reader naturally will ask, What was the fate of the 
Congregation of Brescia amid these extraordinary vicissi- 
tudes ? The changes introduced into the Eule and manner of 
living of the Ursulines throughout Italy were powerless to 
induce the Congregation of Brescia to modify the Constitu- 
tions received from their holy foundress, approved by the 
Holy See, and slightly modified by St. Charles Borromeo as 
Commissary Apostolic. The early associates of St. Angela 
had been so thoroughly trained by that great mistress of 
Christian perfection, their souls had been moulded by her 
gentle, firm, and skillful hand into a form of such persistent 
goodness, that both priests and people found no symptom 
of degeneracy when the first generation of Ursulines died 
out and were succeeded by a second and a third of equal vir- 
tue and even more skilled usefulness. Thus this admirable 
sisterhood, in the land which was its birthplace as well as 
that of Angela Merici, continued to be consistent with them- 
selves amid the religious struggles and political convulsions 
of the age, as constant in their edifying purity, as deep and 
inexhaustible in the resources of their manifold devotedness, 
as the waters of the Lake of Garda around Desenzano and 
Salo ; their firmness in resisting and repelling all innovation 
was as calm and unmoved as the mountains which encircle 
the beauteous lake itself ; and the fruits of their apostleship 
in training youth and guarding the ancestral faith of their 
people were as plentiful and as perennial as the golden har- 
vests of Lombardy and Venetia. 

In 1581, during the ofiicial visitation made by Sfc. Charles 
Borromeo, the Brescian Congregation numbered four hun- 
dred sisters. Down to the invasion of Upper Italy by the 



AND THE URSULINE8. 355 

French revolutionary armies under Bonaparte in 1796, the 
Congregation of Brescia continned to exist in the conditions 
in which St. Angela had left it, and which St. Charles Bor- 
romeo had approved. The conqueror supj)ressed an Order 
which taught the female youth of Italy to live according to 
the Gospel of Christ ; for the Jacobinism of the revolution 
would have no Gospel but its own godless creed, and no 
charity exercised toward the poor, the sick of body, and the 
infirm of spirit, but that of an equality, a liberty, a frater- 
nity, as hollow, bitter, and deadly to the taste as the fruits 

''which grew 
Near the biturainous lake where Sodom flamed.** 

The property of the Ursulines — the sacred patrimony of the 
poor, and the sweet nursery of the little ones of Christ's 
flock — was ruthlessly seized by the Corsican, and never again 
restored to its former uses. In 1827, when Italy and Europe 
began to recover from the chronic disasters of the jSTapoleonic 
wars and the long intoxication of revolutionary doctrines, 
the Bishop of Brescia, who had found the few surviving Ur- 
sulines busy at work amid the social ruin, like a few sickly 
bees clustering around the fragments of their once swarming 
hive, induced the devoted women to give up living in the 
bosom of their families and to adopt the seclusion of the 
cloister. With the self-sacrificing docility which had ever 
characterized the daughters of St. Angela in their dealings 
with episcopal authority, the greater number of the Brescian 
Ursulines yielded to the counsels of the good Bishop Gabriele- 
Maria Nava ; but there were many to whom the restraints of 
the cloister were impossible or unacceptable, and who yearned 
only for the liberty of following out their vocation in the 
footsteps of their holy foundress. These continued to live 
unmolested, and respected by all, in the bosom of their own 



356 ST, ANGELA MERICI, 

families^ devoting themselyes unobtrusively, unmurmuringly, 
and hopefully to such duties and labors as they were permitted 
to fulfill. The aged, who remembered how numerous and 
blessedly active the uncloistered bands of XJrsulines had been 
in city and country, before the Jacobin soldiery had poured 
across the Alps to blight and to destroy, beheld ^ith regret 
the disappearance from the streets of Brescia of the well- 
known habit. And the men and women whom the long 
cycle of revolutionary storms had bound more firmly to the 
faith and customs of Catholic Italy were frequent and loud 
in their wishes to see the habit of St. Angela once more worn 
by the daughters of the noblest and the wealthiest, and grac- 
ing their homes with the virtues it was ever sure to bring. 
The poor and the laboring classes especially needed the fa- 
miliar and ever-welcome presence of the modest veiled figures 
of the Umiliate — " the little sisters" whose heart understood 
so well the wants of the poorest and the pangs of the suffer- 
ing, and whose hand had been to their fathers before them 
the hand of God ever extended to succor — gentle, merciful, 
and patient. And so Brescia, while surrounding with its 
sympathy and reverence the cloistered community founded by 
Bishop Nava, could not help cherishing with a grateful pity 
and a hopeful expectancy the scattered and drooping rem- 
nants of their own once numerous and worshiped Company 
of St. Ursula. 

Nor were all these hopes doomed to disappointment. 
"When, following up the work began by French Jacobinism, 
the Piedmontese Government leb loose on Upper Italy — in- 
deed, on the entire peninsula — the well-organized and disci- 
plined armies of antichristian radicals and revolutionists, who 
are fast obliterating the glorious civilization of the Catholic 
ages, it became an imperative necessity to preserve the homes 
and the children of all classes, of the laboring poor in partic- 



AND THE URSULINE8, 357 

iilar^, against fhe active and most intelligent propagandism of 
the secret societies. Cloistered communities of Ursnlines and 
other religious women could, where by some miracle they 
were tolerated, receiyeand educate the daughters of the high- 
born and the rich. But it needed the presence in the home 
and in the school-room of such women as were Angela Merici 
and her companions, to show by a God-like life, by the di- 
yinest charity and deyotedness, that there was still a God 
upon earth, and that He had care of the poor and the suffer- 
ing ; to demonstrate to the victims of unbelief and rampant 
Socialism, that Christian virtue was still a living farce in the 
world, and that heroic self-sacrifice was ready to save society 
by the cross. 

Pius IX., with that Heaven-sent instinct which attaches to 
the office of the Supreme Shepherd of souls, encouraged or 
created everywhere he could associations aiming to train the 
young to Christian life. Hence the promptness with which, 
in July, 1861, when the greater part of Upper and Central 
Italy was overrun by the fanatical apostles of Mazzini, fol- 
lowed and abetted everywhere by the colporteurs of the Evan- 
gelical Alliance and the Bible Societies, he issued a decree 
authorizing the Church in every land to celebrate the feast of 
St. Angela Merici as it was in Italy, and bestowing on this 
great apostle of female education and on her daughters, 
throughout the world, the generous meed of praise so well 
merited by centuries of fruitful toil. The terms in which 
the Holy Father spoke of Angela and her Institute — of their 
priceless services in the past, of their adaptation to the sore 
need of the present age, and of the divine promise that they 
should last through all future time — thrilled the souls of the 
Ursulines everywhere, but more especially those of the un- 
cloistered remnant of the venerable Congregation of Brescia. 
This decree signed by Cardinal Patrizi, but speaking in the 



358 ST, ANGELA MEBICI, 

name of the Vicar of Christ, solemnly stated a fact nnmen- 
tioned by any historian of St. Angela — that it was dn Rome, 
•while yisiting in 1525 the tombs of the holy Apostles, " she 
felt herself moved to promote the education of young girls, 
well knowing that these, surrounded as they were by the 
spreading heresies of Luther and Calyin, were, like the open- 
ing flower among thorns, in imminent peril of losing their 
virginal blossom/^ 

But now that errors far more deadly than those of the six- 
teenth century were poisoning the homes, the minds, and the 
hearts of all Italy — of all Christendom indeed — this voice 
from Rome was like the breath of inspiration for all who, 
like Angela and her early associates, thirsted to be to the 
modern world the apostles of education, and to shed the 
light of their teaching and example around the hearthstone of 
every Christian home. In Brescia, desolated by the invasion of 
triumphant radicalism, the few remaining uncloistered Ursu- 
lines were recalled to a new life, as by the tones of the resur- 
rection trump. The Countess Girelli and her sister imme- 
diately set to work, with the countenance of the local su- 
periors, to reorganize the primitive sisterhood as Angela con- 
ceived it, and as required by the social needs of our day. The 
two ladies soon saw themselves surrounded by a numerous 
body of young women animated by the spirit of St. Ursula. 
Steadily and rapidly these numbers went on increasing, to the 
intense delight of the Brescian Catholics. Donna Girelli be- 
gan with twelve, just as St. Angela began in 1535, On the 
4th of April, 1864, the first regular assembly was held. In 
1866, Girolamo de' Verzeri, Bishop of Brescia, gave these new 
and welcome auxiliaries canonical institution, enjoining 
them to keep the primitive Rule inviolate. On the 29th of 
July that same year, he received the religious profession of 
the members of the restored Company — the very day en 



AND THE UBSULINES, 3o9 

•which. Pius IX. beheld the statue of St. Angela Merici sol- 
emnly placed in St. Peter^s among those of the other founders 
of religious Orders. 

There was thus great joy in Brescia, both in the cloistered 
community of St. Ursula, who saw their own hands strength- 
e]ied by this proyidential accession of numbers, and among 
the fervent followers of the Countess Girelli, who soon 
counted five hundred sisters within the single diocese of 
Bishop Verzeri ! From Eome came again in 1867, through 
the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Council 
other eloquent words of commendation and encouragement 
warm from the fatherly heart of Pius IX. '^ Your fervent 
Company of maidens,'' such were some of the words, " having 
for its object to secure in the midst of secular life the sancti- 
fication of both mistresses and pupils, is to us a great com- 
fort. May it please our Lord, through the intercession of 
St. Angela Merici, who has deserved so well of your city and 
who is the protectress of your Company, to make the latter 
become like the mustard-seed of the Gospel, growing to the 
stature of a great tree, in which the birds of the air shall build 
their nests !" 

We may well trust, now that he is near St. Angela in 
Heaven, that Pius the Beloved will obtain by his prayers that 
the '' mustard-seed " shall live and grow and increase might- 
ily through the long wintry years of Italy's sore trial. 



CHAPTER XXL 

THE UKSULINES IK FRANCE — CONGREGATIONS OF AIX, BOR- 
DEAUX, PARIS, LYONS, AND TOULOUSE. 

In 1572, the year in which the bull of Gregory XIII. ap- 
proved and confirmed anew the Institute of St. Angela, and 
sanctioned the changes made in it at Milan by St. Charles 
Borromeo, was born at Avignon, in France, a child destined 
to exercise immense influence on the destiny of the Company 
of St. Ursula. This was Frances de Bermond. She was a 
child of extraordinary promise, given for a brief space in her 
early girlhood to the enjoyment of the admiration and homage 
which her birth and precocious talents inspired, and then sud- 
denly and wholly devoting her life to God and the good of 
souls. Urged on by the advice and examples of a saintly 
aunt, Frances made a vow of virginity and gave up her whole 
time to the instruction of po&r children, winning to the cause 
of Christian education her former playmates, with whom she 
formed a society wholly consecrated to the God-like work of 
caring for the children of the poor. They were all of noble 
birth, these French maidens. Without, perhaps, having 
heard of Angela Merici and her Brescian companions, 
Frances de Bermond and her mates followed precisely the 
same road as Angela. As, however, the French maiden was 
born a century later than the Maid of Desenzano, she found 
the printing-press in full operation everywhere, furnishing 

360 



AND THE URSULINES, 361 

books^ at an incomparably lower price, to all classes of the 
community, and thus stimulating the children of all classes 
to acquire the elements of secular knowledge. These high- 
born ladies of Avignon had all, like Frances herself, shared 
in the enormously increased facilities of learning, and they 
were inspired to open schools in their native city, in which 
the children of the poor and the laboring classes were taught 
not only the elements of the Christian doctrine, but the ele- 
ments as well of human letters. 

The entire city, astonished at first, and amused by the reso- 
lution taken so suddenly by young ladies so gifted and so 
petted, did not hesitate to admire and applaud when it be- 
came evident that this devotion to a great and sorely needed 
work w^as not a passing caprice, but a serious purpose con- 
scientiously formed and carried out with quiet but constant 
earnestness. It so happened, too, that a saintly French 
priest, the venerable Csesar de Bus, had just founded a soci- 
ety of priests on the model of the Institute of St. Angela 
{'' Fathers of the Christian Doctrine'^), and having for its 
aim to bestow on the children of the lower classes the inesti- 
mable boon of a truly Christian education. Father de Bus 
was neither slow nor lukewarm in encouraging the labors of 
Frances de Bermond and her little band of apostles. The 
Archbishop of Avignon also, who was delighted with the zeal 
of these new teachers and with the blessed fruits it produced, 
obtained from Pope Clement VIII. (1592-1605) a formal ap- 
probation of the nascent society. 

So far, Frances de Bermond and her associates had no con- 
nection with the Company of St. Ursula, and probably no 
certain knowledge of its existence or purpose. By a provi- 
dential train of circumstances, the life and work of St. An- 
gela was soon made known to the devoted girl. A young 
lady of Avignon of about the same age as Frances, and self- 



362 ST, ANGELA MEBI€l 

consecrated like her to the yirginal life, receiv.ed from her 
spiritual director, the Bishop of Oarpentras, a copy of the 
Eule of St. Angela, as approved and modified by St. Charles 
Borromeo for the TJrsulines of Milan. This was no sooner 
communicated to Frances de Bermond and her fellow-laborers, 
together with an account of St. Angela and the Society 
founded by her, than the fervent Avignon ese maidens unani- 
mously resolved to become the spiritual daughters of so great 
a parent. 

Miss de Masan de Yaucluse, who had been instrumental in 
making the work of St. Angela known to Frances de Ber- 
mond, was now enabled to complete what she had so happily 
begun, and bestowed on her new friend a house of lier own 
in the little town of L'Isle, some twenty miles to the south- 
east of Avignon, and noted for its industrv as well as its pic- 
turesque situation. 

This first house of the TJrsaline Order in France was the 
hive from which swarms of holy women were to go forth to 
almost every part of France — indeed, to every Catholic coun- 
try of Europe, except Italy. To be sure, these swarms, as 
they settled and housed themselves and began to ply their 
indefatigable industries in this or that province, had, by the 
imperious necessity of circumstances, to modify the condi- 
tions of their existence — just as bees in the gigantic forests 
of Brazil build their homes and lay up their sweet stores of 
honey in a manner that differs much from the hives they 
construct in our gardens ; and just as the European sparrow, 
lately introduced into America, when forced or induced to 
nestle in our woods, will cease to confine himself to the eaves 
of our dwellings, but build in the tree-tops like the singing 
birds which he persecutes and puts to flight. Still, under 
these altered conditions of climate, country, and habitation, 
bees are bees and sparrows are sparrows the whole world over. 



AND THE URSULINES. 363 

St. Charles Borromeo, in inducing liis Ursulines to live 
together in community and to bind themselves by the simple 
vows of religious life, did not purpose to establish what can- 
onists call a strict inclosure, or a cloister attended with the 
rigorous and inviolable seclusion known among the old mo- 
nastic orders of women. The Ursulines were primarily in- 
tended as an active Order — as one to occupy itself principally 
with teaching. So, while living within their own houses, 
the Milanese Ursulines were wont to busy themselves contin- 
ually both in teaching little girls and in giving religious in- 
struction to adult persons of their own sex. The new house 
at L'Isle copied faithfully those of Milan. 

Soon, as the limited field of activity afforded in that town 
became like the garden of God under the cunning husbandry 
of Mother de Bermond and her sisterhood, other places along 
the Khone and its affluents began to covet the happiness of 
the people around Vaucluse.^ Aix was the first city of 
Southern France to solicit a colony of sisters from Mother de 
Bermond. This was in 1600. Another colony was sent to 
Marseilles in 1603. Indeed, all Provence seemed anxious to 
have its daughters trained by such exemplary and accom- 
plished mistresses. The centre of government of the French 
Congregation, as established by Frances de Bermond, was at 
Aix, the capital of Provence. Avignon itself, '' the City of 
the Popes," and at that time still belonging to the Holy See, 
seems to have followed the example of Aix and Marseilles, 
instead of honoring itself and the noble maidens who were 
born in it, by being the first to claim their services. At any 
rate, in 1605, after the death of Clement VIII., the Cardinal- 
Archbishop of Bordeaux, Francis de Sourdis, happening to 
pass through it on his way to the Conclave, made the ac- 

1 The Valley and Fountain of Yauclue, immortalized by Petrarch are in themselves 
most wonderful and beautiful. The whole country abounds in sublime scenery. 



364 ST, ANGELA MEBICl 

quaintance of Mother de Bermond and her daughters. He 
wished to see them at work in their schools, and was so 
charmed by what he saw, that he resolved to introduce them 
into his diocese as soon as he had come back from Eome. 
The conclave ended, the archbishop, who was a most worthy 
prelate, stopped at Milan on his homeward journey, in order 
to visit the tomb of St. Charles Borromeo, to study the in- 
stitutions of every kind which the Apostle of Lombardy had 
created for the benefit of religion, and to fire his own soul 
near the grave of this model priest and pastor with the sacred 
flame which had enlightened and purified Milan. 

It was remarked that the noble pilgrim remained in prayer 
by the side of the holy archbishop's remains during seven 
consecutive hours, beseeching God through the intercession 
of His great servant to grant himself the f allness of the apos- 
tolic spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice. De Sourdis, in 
one of his letters, tells us that his soul received great favors 
there — among them the determination to copy faithfully the 
virtues of St. Charles, and the design of establishing in Bor- 
deaux a virginal company of teachers like those in Milan and 
Brescia.^ He purposed combining both forms — the life in 
community and the freedom of remaining with one's family. 
In 1618, however, he carried out a further resolution of hav- 
ing, together with Ursulines of these two classes, a monastery 
of cloistered Ursulines subject to all the forms of rigorous 
monastic life, such as that just established in Paris by the 
joint action of Mother de Bermond, Madame Acarie, and 
Madame de Sainte-Beuve. 

Cardinal de Sourdis found ready to his hand three of those 

1 Salvatori, p. 63. Abbraccio subito il piissimo cardinale la santa ispirazione ; e 
giunto a Bordeaux mise mano air opera. Fu questo circa il 16C6, qiiando vi stabili buon 
numero di Vergini sotta la Regola di nostra eanta, coUe aggiunte fattevi da S. Carlo ; ed 
alcuna di lore ne uni a vivere congregate in una specie di conservatorio, lasciandone 
altre sparse per le famlglle. 



AND THE UR8ULINES, 365 

Christian women so numerous in the France of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries — women in whose souls ever burned 
the spirit of St. Louis, St. Vincent de Paul, and St. Jane 
Frances de Chantal. These were Fraiices and Mary de Ca- 
zeres and Jeanne de la Mercerie. The cardinal gave them 
the Milanese Rule, and sent them to reside in a kind of half- 
cloistered seclusion at Libourne, some twenty-five miles from 
Bordeaux, where they prepared themselves with uncommon 
fervor to receive the religious habit, and to make, at the 
proper time, the simple vows required by the Eule. They 
received the habit solemnly on June 24th, 1606, returned to 
Bordeaux six months later, and on November 30th the Ur- 
suline community was inaugurated with great solemnity, 
Frances de Cazeres being declared superior. 

It was, as is well known to students of history, a brief in- 
terval of repose for storm-tossed France, torn and desolated 
by the civil and religious wars of more than half a century. 
The bitter and protracted strife between Protestants and 
Catholics, aided and abetted by the evil passions of foreign 
powers, had roused the tepid into fervor, and disposed the 
fervent to enthusiasm in all good works that aimed at ele- 
vating the intellectual and moral condition of the people. 
There was among most Catholics in France something akin 
to aversion toward new monastic orders on the old plan ; 
and, besides, the need of the age and country was instruc- 
tion for the ignorant, thorough religious education for the 
young, bodily and spiritual help for the countless hosts of 
the suffering, and the edifying example of a holy life brought 
homo to every fireside. 

It was a Godsend, therefore, the good people of Bordeaux 
thought, this creation of the Holy Maid of Desenzano, which 
enabled young women either to live the virginal life of use- 
ful devotedness in common, or to bring its bright examples 



366 ST, ANGELA MEBICl 

to the family hearth ; to make for a sufficient period a thor- 
ough trial of their strength to bear the yoke of religious 
vows, and then either to return to purely secular avocations, 
or to bind themselves permanently to follow " the more per- 
fect way.'^ 

Frances de Cazeres was in Bordeaux what Frances de Ber- 
mond was at Aix and L'Isle and Marseilles — the living image 
of Angela Merici. Between 1606 and 1618 — an epoch ever 
memorable to the great family of monasteries which claim to 
be the offspring of the Congregation of Bordeaux — Mother 
de Cazeres was called on to found no less than six houses of 
the Order. Nothing but the lack of well-trained and experi- 
enced subjects prevented a further extension in the South and 
West of France. 

The saintly superior, however, must have seen great dan- 
gers for the souls of her sisters in their mixing so freely with 
the joyous and pleasure-loving French society of the epoch. 
One must naturally conclude this much from the bull of 
Paul v., of which we shall have to speak presently. The 
conviction must have forced itself on her practical mind and 
scrupulous conscience, that the daughters of the upper classes 
could be more safely and successfully trained to all the ac- 
complishments and virtues necessary to their future career 
in the world by being secluded with their mistresses during 
their school years ; that the children of the poorer classes could 
also be admitted daily to the Ursaline schools without com- 
pelling their teachers to leave the seclusion of their religious 
home ; and that the occupations of the school-room could be 
made to conform iu every essential respect with the strictest 
requirements of claustral life. 

It is affirmed, and on the very best authority, that Mother 
de Cazeres had, in 1608, an ecstatic vision not a little like 
that of St. Angela at Brudazzo, in which she was shown the 



AND THE URSULINES. 367 

wonderful extension of the Congregation of Bordeaux in 
France and outside of it, the bitter opposition she must ex- 
peect in her labors, the transformation of her present estab- 
lishments into monasteries of cloistered nuns, and the co- 
operation of the Holy See toward this much-desired end. 
Her associates, her trusted assistants in the gigantic labors of 
their first foundation, heard her say and repeat that the di- 
yine voice expressly declared : " Thou shalt be the parent of 
a monastic society, and shalt have to bear more than one 
cross." Cardinal de Sourdis, himself a man of God, in- 
quired into the truth of this vision ; and having listened 
attentively to the modest and ingenuous answers of the 
superior, entertained no doubt of the fact. From that 
moment both he and Mother de Cazeres labored together to 
draw up such rules as would meet all the requirements of the 
monastic society which they both contemplated, and which 
might satisfy the Eoman canonists, the committee of cardi- 
nals appointed to examine into such weighty matters, and the 
Holy Father himself. 

The cardinal undertook to go himself to Rome. Before set- 
ting out, however, he deemed it both wise and just to submit his 
project and all the proposed changes to the Ursulines them- 
selves. They had not been unprepared for his design, and 
looking up to him as to another St. Charles, and to their 
mother superior as to a second St. Angela, they saw, in what 
both had matured so long and so conscientiously, a provi- 
dential plan for the exaltation of their own Order and the 
increase of its usefulness. 

The changes proposed by Cardinal de Sourdis and subse- 
quently approved by the Holy See are thus resumed briefly 
by Father Salvatori : 

*' They believed it a timely measure to create a third class 
of cloistered nuns with (solemn) religious vows, as had been 



368 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

done in Paris a few years before (1612). For that purpose, 
retaining the substance of the Eule of the holy foundress en- 
joining on the members to consecrate themselves not only to the 
work of their own sanctification, but also to the sanctification 
of others^ they drew up a new code of rules, embodying what- 
ever was most fitted to their design from the primitive Eule, 
from those of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Augustine ; they 
bestowed on the new Constitutions the name of the latter as 
the greatest, and called the new monastic Order Ursulines 
under the Rule of St, Augustine.^' ^ 

Paul v., after weighing the consideratioi^s presented to him 
by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and receiving a cordial 
commendation from the cardinals appointed to examine into 
the proposed change, issued, on February 5th, 1618, the bull 
In Supremo onilitantis ecclesice solio, fixing for all time the 
form of the new Ursuline Congregation of Bordeaux, and 
regulating with the most minute detail the manner in which 
the nuns themselves are to live thenceforward, and that in 
which they are to keep their schools of boarders and day- 
scholars in conformity with the requirements of a cloistered 
life. 

'' "We bestow the most earnest care,'^ the Sovereign PontiflE 
says, ^^ on everything pertaining to the monasteries and other 
regular establishments, in which devoted women labor to 
increase the glory of religion and zeal for the service of God ; 
in which wise virgins, impelled by a charitable zeal, apply 
themselves to secure not only their own salvation but that of 
others, by taking on themselves the task of educating young 
girls. Their successful and most fruitful labors therein are a 
matter of notoriety; while others, drawn by their ex- 
ample to imitate them, and contemning the attractions of a 
worldly life, desire only to bestow their whole lives on serving 

1 Book i. c. 10, p. 63. 



AND THE UBSULmES, 369 

God within the seclusion of the cloister, and the discipline of 
regular observance, and thus be more free beneath the guid- 
ance of so holy an institute [manner of life] to gather ' flowers 
of honor ' and ' fruit of riches/ ^ as well as to secure their own 
eyerlasting happiness/^ 

This, the pontiff goes on to say, is what has been and is 
still done by the Ursulines of Bordeaux. '' They have 
founded a society under the banner of St. Ursula, resolved, 
in imitation of this saint, to preserve their virginity as a 
thing pleasing to God, taking on themselves, as their proper 
and peculiar mode of life {Instituto) to educate young girls, 
and to teach them the Christian doctrine. Not long after 
these beginnings, considering — the Holy Ghost inspiring 
them the while — how great an obstacle they must find, both 
toward the preservation of their maidenly purity and the 
leading a blamelessly religious life, in the familiar intercourse 
with men, and the private banquetings which French customs 
countenance in the houses of both women and men, they 
sought the seclusion of a dwelling of their own, where, in 
order to shut themselves off from intercourse with men and 
the better to guard their virginal treasure, they resolved to 
live a cloistered life under a regular rule. Thither they all 
betook themselves, and, after two years of probation, they 
bound themselves by the simple vows of chastity, obedience, 
poverty, and stability in their calling, according to the will 
of the Apostolic See. From that time, wearing a habit which 
is equally becoming to maidenly modesty and the religious 
profession, they have not ceased till now to devote themselves 
to the education of young children of their own sex. In 
their house, as is the wont in colleges, they have established 
distinct classes, in which their pupils are taught, first of all, 
the Christian doctrine, enforced by salutary examples and 

^ Ecclesiasticus zxiv. 23. 



370 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

illustrations, thereby preserving these tender minds from their 
worst bane — the poisonous fruit of heresy. They also train 
them to abstain from extravagance in dress, to which their sex is 
so much addicted, teaching them all the arts and industries 
becoming women of the world ; and, in order to induce the 
children of the poor and of needy strangers to come to these 
schools and learn the Christian doctrine, the daughters of St. 
Ursula teach them the useful accomplishments, which may 
enable them afterward to earn a livelihood. Nor have they 
less care and devotion on feast days to assemble servant- 
maids and poor women whose Christian training had been 
neglected, and to impart to them all the knowledge so sadly 
needed. The motherly tenderness displayed by them toward 
the young girls who, with the permission of the cardinal- 
archbishop, live in a separate part of their religious abode and 
are educated by them, is most admirable." 

Such, then, is the institution, admirable indeed in every 
way, new to France, suited to the sore needs of its people, 
called for by the spirit of the age, which PaulV. proceeds 
to erect into a regular monastic establishment, so constituted 
and disciplined that it shall fulfill the loftiest aims of Angela 
Merici and her early associates, take its place in the Church 
of God by the side of the most venerable creations of the 
Holy See, and be, by the blessing of Christ^s Vicar, endowed 
with the power to multiply itself and cover all France and all 
Christendom with its offshoots. 

While the Congregation of Bordeaux was thus rapidly 
advancing through the successive stages which brought it to 
its final form of completeness, the Ursulines of Paris were 
passing, but more rapidly, through a similar process of 
development. The reader will not be sorry to know 
who were the saintly women who planted in the capital of 
* France an establishment vieing in efficiency and f ruitfulness 



AND THE URSULINES. 371 

with that of Bordeaux. The bull of Paul V., erecting the 
Parisian establishment into a monastery of cloistered nuns, 
was issued June 13th, 1612, while the bull obtained by 
Cardinal de Sourdis was dated some six years later. 

As we are, however, occupied with the only true superiority 
of which the daughters of Angela Merici are envious — that of 
zeal in the cause of education and fervor in the pursuit o£ 
holiness — we may well pass by whatever relates to chronologi- 
cal questions, and attend solely to one of the most surprising 
moral phenomena recorded in the history of the Church. 

Mother de Bermond, as we have seen, was called upon in 
1608 to send some of her sisters to Paris, where an establish- 
ment of Ursulines had already been begun. Two of the most 
illustrious women of that age were the founders of this great 
nursery of apostolic educators of youth : Barbara Avrillot, 
widow of Pierre Acarie de Villemor, who foanded in France 
the Reformed Carmelite Order of St. Teresa, became herself a 
Carmelite nun, and was beatified under the name of Mary of 
the Incarnation ; ^ and a cousin of Madame Acarie's, also a 
noble widow lady called Madeleine Lhuillier de Sainte-Beuve. 
While the former^shasbandwas still living and his worshiped 
wife was busied in educating her three sons and three 
daughters, she found time, among the many good works which 
she and Monsieur Acarie originated and promoted, to intro- 
duce and to found the Eeformed Carmelites. So great was 
the number of postulants for admission into the new Order 
who presented themselves to Madame Acarie, that no place 
could be found for them in the first house opeiied, and many 
who were admitted were unable to endure the privations and 
austerity of the Carmelite Rule, Nevertheless Madame 



1 It was doubtless in her honor that Marie Gayard-Martin, foundress of the Ursulines 
of Quebec, took the name of -'Mary of the Incarnation," under which she is known 
and has already won th§ title of *' Venerable," 



372 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

Acarie^s motherly solicitude provided for both classes a house 
in which they could lead a life of religious seclusion while 
looking forward to a realization of their cherished hopes. 
She induced them^ while thus waiting, to devote their 
energies to the instruction of children of their sex. The 
Hotel Saint- Andre, a spacious mansion in a Parisian suburb, 
was selected for the common residence and the central 
school,and placed under the direction of Nicoletta Le Pelletier, 
who had founded a like establishment at Pontoise in 1599. 
The Bishop of Paris, charmed with the great good effected by 
these young teachers, heartily approved the establishment, 
and graduated classes of pupils were at once opened, attract- 
ing more children than could be accommodated. 

At first, and while the school was in its infancy and the num- 
ber of the teachers inconsiderable, Madame Acarie found in 
her own resources and the generosity of her friends wherewith 
to meet all the necessary expenses. But as the work grew on 
her hands, and its fruits increased beyond her most sanguine 
expectations, she cast about anxiously for some one of those 
noble souls, so easily met with on French soil, whose great 
wealth is far beneath their liberality. She suddenly bethought 
her of her young and widowed relative, Madeleine de Sainte- 
Beuve. The latter had been herself divinely moved to 
undertake some such work. " I cannot refuse to put my 
hand to this good work,'^ she said in answer to her relative. 
^' We shall together found a community of Ursulines, on one 
condition, however— that the members shall, as soon as it may 
be done conveniently, adopt the rules of monastic life.^^ 

Madame de Sainte-Beuve lost not a momeiit. She took 
lodgings in the neighborhood of the Hotel Saint- Andre, and 
made her design known to her friends 9,nd acquaintance. 
The quick religious instincts of French women of the upper 
classes enabled them to perceive at a glance what a vast and 



AND THE URSULINES. 373 

fruitful field was thus about to be opened to the zeal of the 
young and the generous-hearted. As if the voice of Madame 
Acarie and her relative were a trumpet-call summoning the elite 
of French maidenhood to a new apostleship, the daughters of 
the best Parisian families immediately came forward to join the 
community of the Hotel Saint- Andre ! Among them were 
noble maidens bearing the names of DeMarillac, D'Urfe, De 
Vieuxpont, and D'Esigny. It was then, when the future of 
this first great school seemed so promising, that Mother de 
Bermond was summoned from Marseilles. She was forth- 
with appointed to govern the new establishment with the title 
of prioress, and both Madame Acarie and Madame de Sainte- 
Beuve besought her to enforce among the sisterhood the 
TJrsuline Eule as borrowed from the Congregation of Milan. 
Madame de Sainte-Beuve, meanwhile, had sold a portion 
of her patrimonial estates, and purchased near the Hotel 
Saint- Andre the grounds needful to her design, on which she 
constructed two additional buildings — one for a boarding- 
school, and the other for the sisters^ dwelling-house. A 
spacious chapel also arose under the energetic supervision of 
the foundress ; and everything was urged forward with such 
indefatigable activity, that the chapel was opened for divine 
service on September 29th, 1610. 

Until that day, however, no word had been spoken to 
Mother de Bermond about the proposed transformation of 
her Parisian community into a monastery of cloistered nuns. 
But Madame de Sainte-Beuve had only been waiting for this 
occasion to lay her design before the prioress and the entire 
sisterhood. So, after mass, they were all assembled in 
chapter, and their benefactress exposed her views of monastic 
life in connection with the mighty work to which they had 
all put their hands, giving her motives with such eloquence 
and persuasiveness, that her hearers, the prioress herself 



374 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

setting tlie example, assented at once to the proposal. 
Mother de Bermond, as well as her sisters, stipulated expressly 
that the purpose and spirit of St. Angela's Institute should 
be preserved in the new Eule, and that, whatever changes 
should be decreed by the Holy See, the cloistered community 
should remain a part of the Company of St. Ursula. 

In spite of the energy with which Madame de Sainte-Beuve 
pushed matters forward in Paris and at Rome, the bull Inter 
Universa, converting the Ursuline community of the Hotel 
Saint-Andre into a monastery of cloistered nuns with the 
Eeformed Rule of St. Augustine, was only issued on June 
13th, 1612. 

The chief point from which the monastery of Paris is made 
to differ from that of Bordeaux, canonically erected in 1618, 
is that together with the ordinary religious vows of poverty, 
chastity, and obedience, there is enjoined an additional 
obligation of ^^ devoting themselves to the instruction of 
young girls, making of this occupation their chief end and 
purpose, ever keeping this before their minds, ordering to this 
end all and each of their functions and offices, giving to its 
attainment their whole strength and care, convinced that in 
so doing they are fulfilling the purpose of their divine 
calling."^ 

The Ursulines of Aix and its dependencies were not willing 
to lose the services of Mother de Bermond, and unprepared, 
as yet, to accept for themselves the great change about to be 
effected in the Parisian sisterhood. So they hastened to 
recall one whom they still reverenced as their parent and 
guide. 

1 Elapso probationis tempore professionem emittere, paupertatis, castitatis et obedi- 
entise votis se adstringere, necnon dictae puellarnm instnictioni, eum sibi praecipuum 
flnem et scopum proponentes, id perpetuo cogitantes, ad id omnia et singula munla et 
officia disponentes, totis viribus et eedulitate animi in id incumbentes, ea demum ra- 
tione se divinse vocationi satisfacere posse credentes. . . . 



AND THE URSULINES. 375 

Madame de Sainte-Beu ve was thus left free to accomplish her 
purpose. On the 11th November^ Henri de Gondy, Bishop 
of Paris — which, by the way, only became an archbishop's 
see in 1622 — the first Ursuline monastery in the capital of 
France was inaugurated with all the solemn formalities 
required by the canon law, and in obedience to the bull of 
Pope Paul V. 

The holy woman, who had found in Madame Sainte-Beuye 
a providential instrument ready to her hand and docile to all 
the promptings of Christian generosity, never for one moment 
ceased to watch over the growth of their joint work. It was 
only about a year after the canonical institution of the 
TJrsulines in their monastery of the Hotel Saint- Andre that 
Barbara Acarie lost her noble husband, and some further 
time elapsed before the widow entered the Carmelite monastery 
in which one of her own daughters was superior, and assumed 
the name, now dear to the Christian world, of Mary of the 
Incarnation. What she did for her cherished TJrsulines, and 
which should be mentioned in this place, may be best stated 
in the words of her Italian biographer. 

^' Fully aware of the great good effected by the religious 
TJrsulines in giving a Christian education to young girls, 
according to the method of their pious Institute, and how 
advantageous to the city of Paris it would be to possess at 
least one monastery of their order, she lost not a moment in 
laying before a rich and devoted relative her desire, and 
persuaded her to undertake the foundation of the proposed 
establishment. Having obtained the promise of her cousin, 
Blessed Mary forthwith took all the steps necessary toward the 
execution of their joint enterprise. The requisite authoriza- 
tion was obtained, and the first TJrsuline monastery soon 
arose in Paris. 

^' The zeal of Blessed Mary did not, however, stop there ; 



376 • 8T, ANGELA MEEICl 

as soon as the sisterhood was established in their home, she 
would frequently visit them to see that they had everything 
comfortable and orderly, to make sure that the pupils lacked 
nothing that was needful, to animate every person within the 
house to fervor, to the exact observance of the Eule, and 
inducing the most saintly men of that age to visit and instruct 
the rising community. Nor did she cease from her care and 
labor till the monastery was in perfect working order. '^ ^ 

We are thus minute in describing the efforts of the noble 
women who were chiefly instrumental in founding each one of 
the first great Ursuline nurseries or congregations. The subse- 
quent history of each of these, and of their numerous fruitful 
offshoots, does not come within our limited scope. That can 
only be attempted in a history of the Order itself — a task 
long ago most successfully achieved by others. 

This first Parisian monastery, patronized by royalty, and 
sustained by the nobility, whose daughters it educated and 
from among whose daughters the sisterhood never ceased to be 
recruited — blessed too by the popular classes, and fostered 
by the grateful solicitude of the clergy, had in course of time 
to multiply itself far and wide. Madame de Sainte-Beuve, 
privileged to reside within the institution she had founded, 
died the death of the saints, August 29th, 1630 ; but not be- 
fore she had seen the eleventh Ursuline monastery established 
by her own princely liberality. 

In 1640 the monastery of Paris sent two of its noblest and 
most devoted women to join, in Quebec, the little band of 
three Ursulines from Tours who had landed there a twelve- 
month before, led by another heroic widow-lady, who was to 
give to the religious name of " Mary of the Incarnation" the 
added consecration of missionary labors and God-like virtues. 



1 Page 128 of the Italian Life of B. Mary of the Incarnation, published in Rome in 
1791, the year of her solemn beatification, and quoted by Salvatori. 



AND THE URSTILINES, 377 

Thus the two congregations of Bordeaux and Paris were to 
blend in the great monastic school of Quehec their distinctive 
differences and common spirit of unbounded self-sacrifice. 
The saintly foundress of the Canadian Ursulines adopted in 
the Eule which she drew up the fourth vow of the Parisian 
sisterhood, binding the members to make education their 
principal aim and chief labor, while imposing on her com- 
panions the religious habit of Bordeaux somewhat modified. 

Mother de Bermond obeyed without a moment's hesitation 
the order of her superiors at Aix, recalling her to the field of 
her own early labors. She made a great sacrifice in obeying ; 
for she heartily desired to live a strictly secluded life, and had 
been overjoyed by the prospect of seeing the Parisian house 
elevated to the dignity of a regular monastery. But as she 
had been only lent, not given, to the sisterhood of Paris, as a 
mistress and a guide, she deemed herself, very properly, 
bound to yield prompt and unqualified submission to those 
who had sent her thither, and who now recalled her. 

It was soon seen that they were in this seconding God's 
merciful designs for the Ursuline Order in Southern and 
Eastern France. The high-souled woman took the road to 
Aix, stopping, in those days of bad roads and slow stage- 
coaches, for a day or two of rest at Lyons. But the truth 
is, that, servant of God as she was and wholly led by His 
Spirit, she could not tarry anywhere for a single day v/ithout 
seeing the germ of some holy enterprise suddenly burst forth 
from the soil beneath her feet, and become, like the tree 
which shaded the prophet of old, a thing of mature growth 
within the space of a night's slumber. 

It so happened that a wealthy citizen of Lyons, John de 
Eanquet, charmed with all that he had heard of the Ursu- 
lines of Aix and Milan, and alive to the great want of Chris- 
tian education in his native city, had prepared an establish- 



378 ST. ANGELA MERICl 

ment for the reception of Ursulines, and had laid aside a 
fand for their maintenance. More than that/ he had encour- 
aged in his two daughters Clemence and Catherine the de- 
termination to join the sisterhood the moment they took pos- 
session of their abode in Lyons. He no sooner learned that 
Mother de Bermond was in the city than he called on her, 
laid his offer at her feet, and obtained her acquiescence. The 
superiors at Aix sanctioned this acceptance, and Mother de 
Bermond and her traveling companion took instant posses- 
sion of ihe proffered residence, and opened it to their Lyon- 
nese pupils. This was in 1612. During the next six years 
the good work so grew beneath the hands of these two 
women, and the number of postulants from among the noblest 
and best in the community became so great, that the best 
minds among the Ursulines and the holiest men in Church 
and State wished to see in Lyons the same transformation 
effected which had taken place in Paris and Bordeaux. From 
the infant establishment of Lyons several offshoots were 
planted in various parts of Eastern France between 1612 and 
1620 ; among others, that of Moulins in 1616, under Perretta 
de Bermond, a younger sister of Mother de Bermond ; that 
of St. Chamond in 1613, itself the fruitful stem of future 
monasteries ; that of Macon in 1615 ; the great monastery 
of Clermont-Ferrand in 1616, which in 1621, under the gov- 
ernment of Clemence de Eanquet, adopted the changes just 
introduced among the Ursulines of Lyons. 

We omit the long list of others. A bull of Paul V., dated 
April, 1619, conferred on the monastery of Lyons, and on 
the establishments to be affiliated to it, the rank and privileges 
granted in the preceding year to Bordeaux. 

Thus Eome was not allowed toi be unacquainted with the 
marvelous strides which the Order of St. Angela was making 
in France, nor to remain inoperative in seconding the zeal of 



AND THE UBSULINES, 379 

these apostolic women. In very truths their appearance in 
the cities of France, the sudden rise of their schools, and the 
intellectual and moral revival which was either caused by 
their influence or invariably seen to attend it, reminds one 
forcibly of the first spread and growth of Christianity in 
Syria and Asia Minor. 

The Lyonnese sisterhood were neither so prompt nor so 
unanimous as those of Paris and Bordeaux in consenting to 
accept the changes proposed by the Archbishop of Lyons and 
desired by Mother de Bermond. Her example and her per- 
suasive arguments, however, finally won them all over to her 
wishes. On March 25th, 1620, the monastery was canonically 
established, and Mother de Bermond, with her three senior 
sisters, received from the archbishop's hands the religious 
habit, and pronounced by special dispensation the three 
solemn vows of their profession. 

The saintly foundress, who has been justly called the Angela 
Merici of France, continued to labor with the same indefati- 
gable zeal and the same humility of heart to the end of her 
life. She had completed in 1622 an establishment in the little 
town of Saint-Bonnet, near Lyons. As it so often happens in 
little towns, the progress of her community was opposed by 
passions and pretensions out of all proportion with the size 
of the place itself. Her sweetness, humility, and firmness 
overcame everything. But the privations endured by the 
sisterhood and their hard struggle for existence induced the 
great-souled woman to take up her abode with them. And 
thus she died in 1628, in her fifty-sixth year, like the night- 
blooming cereus, as the sun of her life went down, embalm- 
ing the whole country with the sweet perfume of her sanctity. 

It now remains that we should briefly describe the origin of 
the Congregation of Toulouse, so closely connected with that 
of Lyons. 



380 ST. ANGELA MERIGl, 

As we have seen, the Blessed Cassar de Bus contributed 
greatly toward the increase and prosperity of the first French 
Ursulines under Mother de Bermond. The Congregation of 
Fathers of the Christian Doctrine, of which this holy priest 
was the founder, everywhere took an active part in promoting 
the spread and growth of the Ursuline communities, whose 
scope was almost identical with their own. Now the right- 
hand man of Caesar de Bus, both in founding and in govern- 
ing his congregation, was Father de Vigier, a native of L'Isle, 
the very first town of France in which the Ursulines had a 
regular establishment. One of his sisters. Marguerite de 
Vigier, was encouraged by him to join the Ursulines, and be- 
came a foremost member of the Order in the South of 
France. After having distinguished herself by her virtue and 
capacity at Avignon, she was sent to Chabeuil, in Dauphine, 
where the success of her school and the influence of her 
saintly examples were such, that all the Protestant popula- 
tion, with the exception of five families, was won over to 
the Catholic faith. 

Thereupon the Cardinal de Joyeuse, Archbishop of Tou- 
louse, besought Caesar de Bus to obtain for his episcopal city, 
which was overrun by Protestants, a colony of Fathers of the 
Christian Doctrine and an establishment of Ursulines. This 
was in 1604 ; and Father de Vigier and his sister Margue- 
rite were forthwith sent to Toulouse to found houses of their 
respective Orders. Year by year the number of Mother Mar- 
guerite's pupils increased, and with them increased in pro- 
portion the numbers of postulants for admission into her 
community. In 1G09 Cardinal de Joyeuse's successor in the 
archiepiscopal see bestowed on the Ursulines the chapel near 
their convent. In 1610 Mother de Vigier and her compan- 
ions adopted the resolution to live exclusively within their 
own residence, although no steps were immediately taken to 



AND TSS URSULmES. 381 

erect the latter into a monastery. This, however, was merely 
a question of time. Meanwhile, the many works of charity 
which the Ursalines had either originated in Toulouse or pro- 
moted most zealously seemed doomed to die out after the 
withdrawal of the sisters into the seclusion of their new life. 
But many of the ladies who had labored under their guid- 
ance among the sick and poor and ignorant, in the hospi- 
tals, prisons, and the chapels where female sodalities were 
wont to be instructed by the Ursulines, now, at the bidding 
of Mother de Vigier, resolved to continue their wonted mer- 
ciful labors. 

Thus was formed the society of the " Ladies of Mercy of 
St. Ursula.'' They were the zealous and invaluable auxili- 
aries of the Ursulines/ and conferred by their pious and en- 
lightened zeal the greatest services on Toulouse and its neigh- 
borhood. The members never ceased to look up to Mother 
de Vigier and her successors as to their mothers and religious 
superiors. The Holy See looked upon this aflfiliated society 
with favor, and Pope Clement X. (1670-76) granted to the 
members many spiritual privileges. 

But the change which had led to the formation of this so- 
ciety was followed in 1615 by the transformation of the con- 
vent into a monastery of cloistered nuns. Mother de Vigier 
herself was prompt to see the necessity or the opportuneness 
of this change. She had carefully trained her daughters in 
preparation for it. Her excellent brother was sent to Rome to 
obtain the bull of erection. On September 8th, 1615, they 
solemnly received at the hands of the archbishop the conse- 
crated habit of religion, and on the 27th December follow- 
ing they pronounced the solemn vows of their profession. 

Something of the southern enthusiasm marked thencefor- 
ward the fervent piety of Mother de Vigier and her Ursulines. 
Their austerities were such that the ecclesiastical superiors 



382 ST. ANGELA MEBICl 

were obliged to interfere to moderate them. But they neg- 
lected no duty of their calling while thus indulging in a 
rigor which makes our sensuality or our tepidity shudder. 
Besides the increased labor imposed on them by their nu- 
merous boarders, the good nuns opened five new -classes for 
poor children, and on Sundays and holy days gathered into 
their halls poor servant- girls and married women sadly in 
need of instruction, and explained to them the saving truths 
of the Gospel and the practical duties and yirtues of their 
condition. Theirs was an apostleship which extended its 
blessings and — we had almost said — its miracles, to all. For 
the change of life wrought in the women of all classes, and 
by these in the men, was little short of a miracle. 

Of course, other cities were not slow to hear of all this or 
to seek to share in these blessings ; and so, as it happened in 
Paris, and Bordeaux, and Lyons, here also the Ursuline 
monasteries had to multiply themselves in order to satisfy 
the wishes of the surrounding populations. 

The Congregation of Toulouse soon covered the whole of 
the province with its flourishing establishments, none of 
which — and the same may be said in all truth of the other 
Ursuline congregations throughout France — knew any de- 
cline in their fervor or decrease in their usefulness, till the 
French Eevolution came to involve them all in one common 
ruin. From that ruin the Congregation of Toulouse was 
fated never to rise again, as well as those of Tulle, Aries, 
Dijon, and Dole. The few struggling establishments belong- 
ing to the latter cannot obtain further mention in our limited 
space. 

One branch of the stock planted by Mother de Bermond 
merits, however, a special mention, though never so brief. 
This was the religious body known as the Ursulines of the 
Presentation of Avignon, founded in 1623 by Lucretia de Gas- 



AND THE URSULINES, 383 

tineau, and approved as a cloistered monastic establishment 
by Urban VIII. in 1637. The Presentation Ilrsulines estab- 
lished monasteries and schools in several cities, and in 1785 
sent from Pont-Saint-Esprit a reinforcement of zealous nuns 
to the long-suffering Parisian community of New Orleans. 
A second band of sisters under the guidance of Mother Gen- 
soul came out from Marseilles in 1810 ; and in January, 1816, 
the establishment assumed, as we shall see presently, the title 
of Ursulines of the Presentation of Our Lady. 



CHAPTER XXIIL 

OFFSHOOTS OF THE FRENCH UESULIl^ES THROUGHOUT THE 
GERMAN AKD AUSTRIAN EMPIRES, CANADA, THE UNITED 
STATES, IRELAND, AND ENGLAND 

The Congregation of Bordeaux, like its great rival in excels 
lence and apostolic zeal, the Congregation of Paris, was blessed 
with a truly marvelous fecundity. Many of the monasteries 
which owed their birth to Frances de Cazeres and her associates 
did indeed, as we saw in the preceding chapter, join the Pa- 
risian Congregation ; nevertheless, at the time of the French 
Revolution, over one hundred establishments of education 
claimed to belong to the Congregation of Bordeaux. Its 
branches extended to the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, 
Austria, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and Canada. Indeed, 
in the year 1650 we find sixty-eight monasteries belonging to 
this flourishing congregation. 

With the exception of a few houses, the Ursulines of Ger- 
many, Austria, Hungary, and Poland derived their origin from 
the Congregation of Bordeaux. They rendered everywhere 
priceless services to religion and society. Of course, wher- 
ever the Kevolutionary French armies penetrated and main- 
tained a brief sway the Ursuline communities were either 
dispersed or subjected to many annoyances. Still they man- 
aged to remain on the spot, protected by the gratitude and 
veneration of Christian families. When Napoleon I, feU, 

384 



ST, AJSTGELA MERICL 385 

and the French domination ceased^ they resumed their peace- 
ful avocations. In more recent times the cruel and unwise 
enactments known as ^^ the May Laws" once more threatened 
the Ursulines of the new German Empire with total destruc- 
tion. Even in Catholic Bavaria nothing but the powerful 
protection of public opinion stood between them and sup- 
pression. 

To one of these Bavarian houses, that of Landshut, midway 
between Eatisbon and Munich, conjointly with the Hungarian 
Ursulines of Oedenburg, the United States are indebted for 
some of the most promising Ursuline schools — those, namely, 
of St. Louis and New York. 

The Ursuline monastery of Breslau, thanks to that Provi- 
dence who so kindly proportions spiritual help to the needs of 
a population, educated daily some fifteen hundred pupils ! 
And their sisters throughout Prussia and Austria-Hungary 
vied with them in holy zeal and the fervent practise of re- 
ligious perfection. At Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, Presburg, 
Gratz, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, and elsewhere, the Ursuline 
monasteries were peopled from the beginning by the noblest in 
worldly rank and in goodness ; and, as like ever attracts like, 
they have continued down to the present day to have for edu- 
cators of the female youth of all classes the very flower of 
native womanhood. It is on the Christian women who go 
forth from the twenty-four great Ursuline schools of Austria- 
Hungary that good men build their hopes for the society of 
the future. 

So may the Ursulines of the Austrian Empire long con^ 
tinue to be — a blessing to the land which shelters and fosters 
them ! Far otherwise is it with their sisters in Prussia and" 
other parts of the new German Empire. Of course, an anti- 
Oatholic policy which seizes the most shadowy pretexts foi^ 
wholesale persecution could not long tolerate the existence of 



386 8T. ANGELA MERICI, 

such admirable schools as those of Breslau. So, the Ursu- 
lines, guilty solely of deyoting their lives to the children of 
rich and poor alike, were informed by the Prussian authorities 
that they might no longer either teach the poor or live in holy 
poverty themselves on the land of their birth ! They had 
foreseen their doom and prepared for it, having taken meas- 
ures to open an academy for Grcrman children at Marseilles. 
They had been commanded to disappear before October 1st, 
1878. '* The venerable lady superior,^^ writes the Abbe 
Eichaudeau, '' passed through Blois on September the 15th, 
taking with her one of her nuns, who had obtained from the 
French Government a teacher's diploma after a whole year's 
preparation. Fifteen XJrsulines of Schweidnitz (some sixteen 
miles to the south-west of Breslau) have betaken themselves 
to Skalitz, in Bohemia. Their companions remained with 
the determination to yield only to force. The XJrsulines of 
Diiren have been also expelled. The superior, with most of 
her nuns, has gone to reside at Meersen, near Maestricht, in 
Holland. Besides, she has sent a little colony to America, 
where the XJrsulines of Toledo, Ohio, offer them hospitality, 
till such time as the Bishop of Peoria can establish them 
among the German population of his diocese. They must 
have sailed from Havre on the 19th of October." 

Turn we now to the XJrsulines of America. 

Quebec, ^* the walled city of the North," has the honor to 
possess the most ancient XJrsuline establishment in the New 
World, and with it a school which, for efficiency and the 
numbers of its pupils, stands second to no female seminary 
on the Continent. It was founded in 1639 by the venerable 
Mary of the Incarnation (Marie Guyard- Martin), seconded by 
a noble widow lady, Marie Magdaleine de la Peltrie. The 
foundress and« her first companions belonged to the monas- 
teries of Tours and Dieppe, and being joined soon afterward 



AND THE UBSULINES. 387 

by several sisters from Paris, they adopted a Kule combiniDg 
the excellences both of the Congregation of Bordeaux and of 
that of Paris, ending, however, by becoming affiliated to the 
latter. 

The history of the great monastery-school of Quebec forms 
one of the most heroic records in American history/ It has 
fulfilled a most important part in educating the female youth 
of Canada ; and, being admirable in every way, as the writer 
from his boyhood has known it to be*, he could wish with his 
whole heart that it would send colonies of its accomplished 
educators to every part of our vast continent. From Quebec 
issued in 1697 the Ursuline establishment of Three Kivers, 
which, with the brightening prospects of the Province itself, 
is rapidly increasing its labors and numbers. 

Almost a century after the arrival in Quebec of Mary of 
the Incarnation and her companions. Mother Marie Tranche- 
pain, another heroic Frenchwoman, with ten Ursuline com- 
panions, sailed from L' Orient for the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, arriving at New Orleans on the 6th of August, 1727. 
The history of this little band of devoted women is scarcely 
less romantic than that of their Canadian sisters. They were 
at the mercy of the ^^ Company of the Mississippi" till its 
downfall in 1732, and left to face the most exhausting and 
varied labors without adequate means of sustenance or even 
decent accommodation. But their uncomplaining heroism 
only served to endear them to the colonists. Nor was their 
condition ;much bettered by the royal administrators during 
the next thirty years. In a sickly climate, they had to dis- 



1 See "Les TJrsulines de Quebec," 3 vols., Quebec, 1863-64 ; a most interesting work, 
compiled from the most authentic sources, under the direction, if not by the hand, of 
Rev. George Lemoine, the resident chaplain. Also ''Glimpses of the Monastery: A 
Brief Sketch of the TJrsulines of Quebec," 3 vols., ISmo. Quebec, 1872-75 ; a charming 
Bummary of the more voluminous French work. 



388 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

charge the duties of hospitalers, to take charge of the numer- 
ous orphans left by the Natchez massacres and by the exiled 
Acadians, as well as by successive epidemics, and to keep 
school for the girls of the colony. In 1762 they passed 
with Louisiana under Spanish rule ; their numbers 
decreasing so much, that in 1786 they had to re- 
ceive assistance from the Ursuline Convent of the Presenta- 
tion in Pont-Saint-Esprit. The retrocession of the colony to 
France in 1802 alarmed the good nuns, and most of them, to 
avoid falling under the yoke of the French Kepublic, took 
refuge in Havana. This gave rise to the two Ursuline estab- 
lishments in Cuba. Meanwhile the Presentation Ursulines, 
who formed the majority in the New Orleans monastery, con- 
tinued their apostolic labors, caring for the orphans, teach- 
ing their large school, and devoting Sundays and holy days 
to the instruction of colored women. 

When Louisiana became, in 1803, a portion of the United 
States, the apprehensions entertained by the Ursulines about 
their religious liberty were soon quieted, and a new rein- 
forcement of nuns arriving from France in 1810, the com- 
munity were able to increase their field of labor. In 1815, 
during the siege of the city by the English, their school- 
rooms became a military hospital, in which the sick and 
wounded defenders of New Orleans received the most lavish 
care during three whole months. In 1818 the State Legis- 
lature secured by a special act their rights and privileges as 
a religious body, and about the same time they received from 
France a most opportune accession of nine postulants. In 
1824 they removed their residence to a more remote posi- 
tion. 

In December, 1823, three Ursulines from Quebec had 
come, at the appeal of Bishop Dubourg, to aid their New 
Orleans sisters in their increase of labor and lack of laborers. 



AND THE URSULINES, 389 

And, as if the yenerable Mary of the Incarnation had sent a 
special blessing with her daughters, from their arrival dates the 
uninterrupted prosperity enjoyed till 1861. The calamities 
of the gr^at civil war weighed heavily on the Ursulines of 
New Orleans, as it did on the city itself and on the entire 
State. Let us hope that the revival of commercial industry 
and general prosperity which is slowly dawning on the South- 
ern States will bring to the two Ursuline schools of New 
Orleans their merited share of well-being and fruitful increase. 
They deserve it in every way. Despite their own need of la- 
borers, they did not hesitate in 1847 to send a colony to Gal- 
veston under the protection of the devoted Bishop Odin ; 
and in 1852 a second colony settled in San Antonio. 

Meanwhile, in 1812, Father Anthony Kohlmann, who was 
governing as Vicar-General the infant Church of New 
York, wished to provide for the education of Catholic girls 
an establishment as like as possible to the college which he 
had opened for the education of boys. Three Ursulines from 
the Monastery of Black Eock, near Cork, Christina Fagan, 
Sara Walsh, and Mary Baldwin, hesitated not to embark for 
New York, crossing the Atlantic in the most stormy season 
of the year, and arriving at their destination early in April, 
1812. Father Kohlmann procured a residence for them on a 
spot which is now the corner of Fiftieth Street and Third 
Avenue. They forthwith opened a school, were incorporated 
by a special act of the Legislature, and were soon surrounded 
by a large flock of pupils. No postulants, however, offered 
themselves to the good ladies, and as this was the only con- 
dition on which they would continue their labors, they re- 
turned to Ireland in 1815. 

Not before 1855 did New York again possess an establish- 
ment of Ursulines. This time, at the call of Archbishop 
Hughes, the Ursulines of St. Louis sent their superior. 



390 ST. ANGELA MEBICI, 

Mother Magdalen Stehlin, who h^d in 1847 headed the lit- 
tle colony of Hungarian nuns from Oedenburg to St. Louis, 
with ten companions, to found a monastery in the suburb of 
East Morrisania. They took possession of their neW^home on 
the 15th of May, haye prospered under God's blessing, and 
count at the present moment some fifty professed religious, 
with a proportionate number of novices and postulants, and 
a flourishing school. Besides, they have established a mon- 
astery within the heart of the city, with some eighteen nuns, 
and a large school. 

The return to Ireland in 1815 of the Ursuline colony of 
New York reminds American readers of the efforts which 
were made at the same epoch to found an Ursuline monas- 
tery in Boston. This project originated with the Kev. John 
Thayer, himself a native of New England and a convert to 
the Catholic faith, who had in 1811 taken up his abode in 
Limerick, and inspired two of his penitents, the Misses Mary 
and Catherine Eyan, with a fervent wish to be the first apos- 
tles of the female youth of Massachusetts. The undertaking 
was warmly supported by Bishop Cheverus ; but Mr. Thayer 
died in Limerick in February, 1815, and not before the 4th 
of May, 1817, could the two noble sisters embark for their 
transatlantic mission. After a year's novitiate in the Ursu- 
line Convent of Three Eivers, they returned to Boston and 
took up their residence near the cathedral, being joined in 
September, 1818, by their youngest sister and Catherine 
Molineux, a young cousin. Not long afterward two native 
American ladies, Elizabeth Harrison and Catherine Wiseman, 
gave the little community firm hopes of increase by their 
timely accession. 

These hopes were, however, attended with serious appre- 
hensions and discouragements. The New England Puritans 
bore a deep aversion to everything which had the semblance 



AND THE UESUZmES, 391 

of monastic] sm, and public opinion in Boston was greatly ex- 
cited by the presence of the Ursuline sisterhood. Then the 
two foundresses sickened and died, having been preceded in 
the grave by their cousin. This was in 1823-25. The su- 
perior, Mother Mary Joseph, who was the last to be stricken 
down, appealed from her death-bed for help to the Ursulines 
of Quebec, who sent them Mother Mary Edmond St. George 
(Ursula MofEat). 

It was evident that the narrow residence of Boston was also 
unhealthy, and so in 1826 the Ursulines removed to a new 
monastery in Charlestown, which they called Mount Benedict, 
in honor of the Eight Eev. Benedict Fen wick, who had suc- 
ceeded Bishop Cheverus in the see of Boston. In this place, 
doomed to so sad a celebrity, the academy opened by the sis- 
ters acquired a great reputation. Unfortunately, in 1831 
the evil tongue of a silly girl whom the nuns had refused to 
retain in the convent, began to spread false reports among the 
already prejudiced public of Boston. Simultaneously with 
this, one of the sisters, in a temporary fit of insanity, escaped 
from the establishment, and her. extravagant and incoherent 
utterances served as a pretext for the most abominable accu- 
sations in some of the daily papers. A clergyman of noted 
ability and great influence inflamed the public mind by his 
fierce and frequent denunciations ; and the ferment grew so 
rapidly, that on the night of August 11th, 1834, a mob at- 
tacked Mount Benedict, broke into the house, barely permit- 
ting the nuns and their frightened pupils to dress and escape 
with their lives. The magistrates and police kept out of the way, 
while the convent was sacked and burned to the ground. 
Every attempt to obtain adequate reparation for this out- 
rage, so disgraceful to the manhood of New England, has 
hitherto failed. The members of the community took refuge 
in Quebec, and after vain efforts to restore their ruined home, 



392 8T. AN9ELA MERICl 

devoted themselves to the labors of their calling in various 
Ursuline establishments of Canada and the United States. 
A niece of the foundresses^ Catherine Quirk, known in the 
sisterhood as Sister St. Henry, died in Koxbury on the 18tli 
October following the catastrophe, in consequence of her ex- 
posure on the fatal night, and with her eyes fondly turned to 
the ruins of Mount Benedict, her chosen American home. 
Of the Ursulines of Charleston, S. C, we shall, speak after 
giving the history of Black Kock Convent. 

The more permanent Ursuline establishment of St. Mar- 
tin's, near Fayetteville, Ohio, was founded in 1845 under the 
auspices of the present venerable Archbishop Purcell. The 
Ursuline colony sent to him were from the fruitful monas- 
tery of Boulogne-sur-Mer, jointly with that of Beaulieu 
(Correze). When Bishop Purcell first visited Boulogne in 
1839, the Ursulines had for chaplain the Eev. Amedee Kappe, 
for whom he conceived a warm friendship, and who subse- 
quently became Bishop of Cleveland. Bishop Rappe, in his 
turn, obtained a colony of Ursulines from Boulogne in 1849, 
and his diocese now possesses four houses of the Order. So 
blessed indeed have the daughters of St. Angela been in the 
United States, despite the drawback which a strictly clois- 
tered sisterhood must meet with in the active duties of educa- 
tion, that they count twenty-nine houses within the limits of 
the Eepublic. 

We have just mentioned the monastery of Boulogne- 
sur-Mer ; and this will remind the reader that we have yet to 
sketch the rise of the Ursuline schools in Ireland and Eng- 
land, tracing them to their origin in France — the great nursery 
of apostolic devotion. Just as it had happened for the 
establishment of the first Ursuline monastery in Paris, where 
the Blessed Mary of the Incarnation was mainly instrumental 
in founding both Ursulines and Carmelites, so was it in 



AND THE VRSUL1NE8, 393 

Ireland^ where Miss Nano Nagle introduced the first Xlrsulines, 
and founded the Order of the Presentation, becoming herself 
a member of the latter. 

This excellent lady had been educated in the monastery 
of St. Ursula in Paris — the cherished creation of Blessed 
Mother Mary and her cousin, Madame de Sainte-Beuve. In 
that fervent community she imbibed, together with the best 
education France could afford, that zeal for the interests of 
Christ's aflBicted Church which was the motive-power of all 
her conduct after her return to her native land. She left 
France in 1750, being then in her twenty-second year, 
impressed with the conviction that God called her to labor for 
the elevation of the poor classes in her own country. In the 
pursuit of her purpose she was encouraged by her own family ; 
and, after having kept for some time a school in Dublin, she 
went to Cork and soon had under her care two schools for 
boys and five for girls, with good teachers, and a constantly 
growing crowd of pupils. She thereupon solicited aid from 
the Ursulines of Paris, but these did not dare to accede to 
her request. Four Irish ladies, however, animated by Miss 
Nagle's own spirit, at once entered the Paris novitiate with 
the determination of becoming in due time the promoters of 
what they considered to be God's own work in Ireland. 
Their probationary term ended, after appealing in vain to 
the Parisiaiv sisterhood for auxiliaries in their enterprise, 
they set out for Cork, were joined at Dieppe by Mother 
Margaret Kelly of the Ursuline convent in that city, and 
entered their own Irish monastery-home on the 18th Sep- 
tember, 1771. 

Pope Clement XIV. gave this establishment canonical ap- 
probation in 1773, and the sisterhood, increasing in numbers, 
took charge of the schools hitherto directed by Miss Nagle. 
A few years later the Ursulines removed to the village of 



394 8T, ANGELA MERICI, 

Black Eock, in the immediate neighborhood of the city, where 
they opened an academy which soon obtained a world-wide 
reputation. From this monastery swarms have gone forth 
not only to Waterford, Thurles, and Sligo, but to North and 
South America. One South American house only, deriving 
its existence from Black Eock, subsists in Georgetown, 
Demarara — a lonely outpost on the confines of that great 
Brazilian world, which Christian zeal and American enter- 
prise have yet to conquer for God and true civilization. 

The other establishment claiming its descent from Black 
Eock is the Ursuline monastery of Valle Orucis,near Columbia, 
South Carolina. The story its inmates might tell is full of 
pathetic interest and vicissitude. Just while Sister Catherine 
Quirk was on her death-bed at Eoxbury, in October, 1834, 
three professed Ursulines and one postulant from Black Eock 
were crossing the ocean to Charleston. Under the fatherly 
direction of Bishop England, himself a native of Cork, the 
little band of missionaries labored strenuously, and not without 
plentiful fruit among every class of the Carolinian population 
— among the wives and daughters of the colored portion in 
particular. Small as was, comparatively, the number of their 
pupil-boarders, still, belonging as they did to the best families 
in the Carolinas and Georgia, their influence on returning to 
their families was necessarily very great ; and, besides, many 
of the best families in the country became through them 
converts to the Catholic faith. 

In 1844 Bishop Eeynolds succeeded to Dr. England in the 
see of Charleston, and soon afterward ^Hhe older members 
of the community returned to the parent house, and the 
others withdrew to the diocese of Cincinnati, where they 
sojourned until the appointment of Bishop Lynch (1858), at 
whose solicitation they returned and resumed their former 
position of usefulness in the diocese.'^ ^ 

1 The words of Dr. J. J. O'Connell. 



AND THE URSULIKES. 395 



'^ In 1859/' says a circular of the sisters, '^ Bishop 
Lynch bought a large hotel in Columbia. . . . There was 
great excitement among the citizens. . . . But the bishop's 
influence overcame them all. ... So great was our success, 
that our academy soon outstripped those belonging to other 
denominations, and drew to our school the yery elite of their 
pupils. '^ And so the good sisters continued to prosper till 
the gloomy days of 1861. The conyent then became a sort 
of sacred asylum for children and young ladies who were 
alarmed by the progress of the ciyil war or driyen from their 
own homes. Although by far the greater number were 
Protestants, they found in the Ursulines nothing but motherly 
kindness, generous hospitality, solid instruction, and edifying 
example. All this — we blush to record it — did not saye the 
inmates from the cruel fate of war. 

The establishment was pitilessly pillaged and destroyed by 
the Federal troops on February 17th, 1865, in spite of the 
positiye promises of protection given by the commanding 
general, and almost beneath his eyes.^ Thanks to the self- 
sacrificing efforts of the devoted bishop, the Ursuline monastery 
of Columbia, like the other ruined establishments of his 
diocese, are now recovering from the effects of the civil war. 

In England there exist only three Ursuline houses — at 
Upton, near London ; at Croom's Hill, Greenwich ; and at 
Swansea. Those of Upton came from Sittard, in Limburg, 
in 1851, at the instance of Cardinal Wiseman. Unhappily 
for the new-comers, the anti-Catholic spirit aroused by the 
restoration of the hierarchy in England was then at its height 
in the capital. As the sisters had shown themselves clad in 
their religious habit while passing through the streets of 
London, their appearance excited against them the animosity 



1 See circular letter of the Ursulines of Valle Crucis, of October lOth, 18T8 ; also Very 
Hev. Dr. O'Coimeirs " Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia," pp. 211, 260-80. 



396 ST, ANGELA MERIGl, 

of the rabble. After opening school in two localities, they 
found that their prospects did not brighten and that their 
health began to fail. The cardinal then found a house for 
them in Oxford ; but as after the expiration of the lease of 
their residence the Ursulines could not obtain a renewal, and 
no other house would receive them, they had to return to 
Belgium in 1861. The next year, howeyer, they gladly re- 
turned, and took possession of their present abode at Upton, 
six miles from London, and on the border of Epping Forest. 
This time they found themselves at home in their own house, 
the property having been purchased by the cardinal. On 
July 9th, 1877, their community numbered twenty members, 
with a wide and rich missionary field to cultivate. 

The Ursulines of Upton, as well as the parent establishment 
of Sittard, belong to a numerous and flourishing branch of 
the Ursuline Order, planted in 1818 at Thildonck, near 
Louvain — a community of independent Ursulines, who since 
adopted the Rule of Bordeaux, and who made themselves so 
useful in educating the popular classes, that they soon spread 
all over the Low Countries, and numbered forty houses at the 
beginning of 1868. This fruitful congregation was originated 
by Eev. Mr. Lambertz, rector of Thildonck ; and most touch- 
ing and instructive is the history of these forty Ursuline 
monasteries, who are the living providence of God among the 
hard-working people of Belgium and Holland. 

This keen and practical sense of what is most needed by 
the popular classes in every Christian land must be the dis- 
tinctive character of every man or woman, of every body of 
men or of women, who would be living and eflBcient helps 
to religion, to education, to the family home, and to public 
society in our day and for many a day to come. 

This keen sense was characteristic of St. Angela and her 
daughters in the sixteenth century. They could not have 



AISTD THE URSULINES, 397 

obtained the confidence of all Christian families in France, 
Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, as the seventeenth century 
dawned and ran its disturbing course, had their teaching and 
their lives not supplied a great social need. 

The wonderful propagation of Father Lambertz^s Ursulines 
throughout Belgium and Holland shows as well that the spirit 
and rule of St. Angela, when embodied in women who under- 
stand the wants of the people, are as sure to prosper and call 
down the blessings of God and men, as the fire is sure to 
spread in July through the dry grasses of our Western prairies 
beneath a cloudless sky and propelled by a high wind. 

To every house of Ursulines into which this book will go, 
and to every daughter of Angela Merici who happens to read 
it, the author sends the fervent wish and prayer to God, that 
every Ursuline community may sanctify the world around it 
by cherishing the unworldly and self-sacrificing spirit of the 
Holy Maid of Desenzano, and that every child of hers may lift 
heavenward the young souls committed to her, by the fervent 
and constant practice of her Mother's angelic virtues. 



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THE NOVELISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURY ARE 

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The Templeogue Lever is the first attempt to supply a complete uniform 
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